g-wizz

In my experience, the subjects you have listed such as QA and project planning are indeed useful in industry.

However, they are not complicated concepts. I didn't get a degree in SE but found that within a couple of months of working after graduation, I had been exposed to all of these and been taught best practice. After one or two internships, you may find that you will have too. For most people, this is not the case with advanced CS theory which you may or may not be interested in.

Since many of the courses are common between the two, do you need to commit to one or the other right at the start?

I use to wonder the same thing myself before I started using Vim.

Now I'm not a Vim expert but if I had to sum up the benefits, I would say that it allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard _and_ your fingers on the home row the entire time when programming. It's a subtle usability benefit that means that I can use more of my cognitive resources on the programming logic when I don't have to take my eyes off the screen to find the mouse, reach for the mouse, bring my eyes back to the screen, use the mouse and place my hands back on the keyboard. This is a bigger distraction than it sounds.

I know most editors have keyboard shortcuts but for me the user experience is just not the same as Vim's and I didn't fully appreciate this until I was reasonably proficient at using it.

Edit: formatting

"What about collaboration and working with developers to incorporate their knowledge of sound programming structure and data architecture into the site?"

Assuming you've hired a good coder, be clear when explaining what the requirements are and what needs to be done but don't tell him/her how it should be done. Coding and design is where their expertise lies so give them the freedom to use their professional judgement.

You may also find Joel Spolsky's "Field Guide to Developers" article interesting, in particular the section entitled Independence and Autonomy http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...