[dcosson]

I don't know how common it really is for someone to casually teach him/herself CS. Sure, a lot of people teach themselves to build websites or mobile apps, but ask them to, say, search/filter their results and it's pretty easy to see there's not a whole lot of scientific thinking going on. Learning Computer Science is very different than learning to code (i'm not saying it doesn't happen, but from my experience most casual coders don't care very much about the theoretical underpinnings - and don't often need to, with modern languages).

[kylemaxwell]

Of course, many people don't ever cross the gulf between "i can haz programming" and actual computer science. That doesn't mean they /can't/ self-direct themselves.

http://the-paper-trail.org/blog/?page_id=152 (from HN recently) http://overhack.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/self-directed-compu... (my own)

[true_religion]

I agree, computer science is an applied goal-oriented branch of mathematics.

Many people simply don't read math papers for casual intellectual stimulation.