No right or wrong ... whatever works.
Outlaw, it is hard not to have respect for you, or those who went about it the way you did. However the sad reality is that today it doesn't quite work like that anymore down this end. Most airlines have their own schools from which they pick their cadets, and other airlines pre select their cadets and send them to these schools. Some airlines even have select schools and they will only pick people who have been to these schools (BA, KLM, easyJet to name a few).
Many airlines, especially in Europe, are only even taking people who trained the integrated way. If you went modular and your cv isn't straightforward (training in different countries, hours here and there in all different ops etc) it goes straight to the bin. I've been told this directly by my own airline's recruitment pilots. It's how it is today ...
In reality, whilst of course it would be great to go get a ppl, instruct, do anything and everything to build my hours, fly all sorts of machines and gain a vast wealth of knowledge and experiences that no book can ever replace ... but if you want to be a pilot in the safest, most efficient way, that is no longer the way unfortunately.