That's a good point. The project-first approach worked very well for me when learning new software frameworks/libs/etc.

My main concern with EE is that once I'll get to the brain-computer interfaces, I'll be in a situation where there aren't many off-the-shelf components/solutions available, and at the same time I'll likely need to know how I can push physics closer to the edge. I suspect I may need a better theoretical foundation to do that.

That said, I definitely like the idea of focusing a lot on hands-on projects.