[analognoise]

They sure as hell aren't engineers.

Code monkey != Engineer != Computer Scientist

All this BS about "Anyone can code!" has had seriously detrimental effects. Now everyone who can do some website bullshit and say "Agile" a lot thinks they're Carmac.

[merb]

I have no CS degree and I'm would call me between Code monkey and engineer. But I know people with a CS that are only code monkeys. A CS degree doesn't say anything.

[buckbova]

It definitely says "something". Maybe not that the degree makes the person immediately better than one without but that the person is classically trained in the discipline.

They have a breadth of knowledge in programming languages, compilers, cpu architectures, data structures, complexity, computational math, graph theory, and much much moore. Not to mention other things that come with a well rounded education like history and literature.

Can one learn that on their own or from career experience? Probably unlikely they will pusue each topic. Do you need all that to do your typical software job? Probably not.

[merb]

I tried to study, but not just CS, I tried a mixed degree, financial and CS. I failed in the financial part. Still I didn't learn anything new in the first 3 semesters for CS.

The most things you will learn from your colleagues in your first job. Especially about TDD and Testing. You have like 1 semester about testing in the most colleges, that is way too less.

Btw. I live in Germany so maybe the Bachelor degree in CS here is a joke.

[pavlov]

John Carmack doesn't have a college degree. According to Wikipedia, he dropped out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack