I took my undergrad at the university of Manitoba, so I can't speak for the quality or teaching of the courses, but I can say that second year courses often act as the gatekeepers for computer science. Past the basic knowledge, and starting to give more fundamental knowledge essential for the specialty third/fourth year courses. Often if you can make it past the second year courses you'll be fine, but if you can't handle them it's not going to get any easier. Taking my Masters at McGill, often I'm teaching myself, and for comp 535 I was basically a TA.

This isn't to disregard all the posts about the various second year comp sci courses, there may be serious issues with the current course outlines, but just pointing out why there are often posts about second year, and few about any other years.

Edit: I'm just now realizing mcgill comp sci courses start in the 200's instead of 100's... Point still stands for other comp sci posts I've seen on this subreddit, but yeah... sounds like a tough semester