As a veteran of this class, I do believe it helped make me a better programmer. There's a noticeable divide in terms of programming confidence/flexibility/efficiency among the Cornell CS students who do well in this class and enjoy it, and those who fear it or runaway from it. That said, a lot of the benefit came from this course gathering the brightest CS students as TAs. Without having access to those TAs and the challenges they posed in section or office hours, I'm not sure it has nearly as much value.