ECE 352 was the weedout class that would be responsible
for much of the damage.
The problem is that weed out classes substitute the easier task of deciding who is prepared for the harder task of preparing students. The author's success in the class was primarily due to the skills and knowledge they brought to the first lecture: relative success in the class was not a result of what was taught but of what was not taught. The "difficult" final still only required a few hours coding and not developing the habit of coding every day for several hours.
In my field, architecture, structures is the notorious weed out class at the undergraduate level, and truss design is the the rock which dumps all but an arbitrary few into the sea. Architects don't design trusses in contemporary practice. Hell, outside engineers employed by fabricators structural engineers working on buildings rarely design trusses (mostly they specify their structural requirements).
But my structures course was different. I studied architecture in grad school. Grad schools weed out during admissions and afterward their goal is largely to prove they made the correct decision. Having been in the industry before schooling. I could see that my structures course taught the important elements for practising and skipped the difficult for the sake of difficulty.
Interestingly, participating in Coursera classes I have seen that the more accomplished teachers tend to focus more on what is important and less on how hard the class should be. When the instructor wrote the book, maybe they know that the ideas are hard enough.