One reservation I have when I read about these MS programs is that they often sound like they will be heavy on group work. I see where that is valuable to prepare people just starting off in their career, but as someone who has been doing "group work" for the past 10 years irl, I'm not really interested in the mock UN version of having a day job.

Have your classes been built around group projects, or can you go it alone if you're doing it for kicks? I'd love to spend some time studying CS and end up with something to show for it, but I'm not interested in group-work-as-workplace-prep.