[radagaisus]

Here is my plan: in a year I'm finishing my army service. I'll be 21. Instead of going to the university I'll take three years off.

Right now I practice my software development skills. I practice BDD, pick up new mainstream languages, practice writing good and concise code, working with people, etc.

When I'll finish the army I'll have three years experience in software development. I've worked at a couple of start ups already, I'm lead dev in the army and we are pushing a new project every month or so, I have my own start up and hopefully by the time I'll finish I'll have the elusive paying customers.

And then I'll learn whatever I want for three years. All the math I want, all the algorithms I'm interested at. I'll design a language, I'll write my own compiler, I'll meditate on data structures and work on large open source projects.

That's far better than university. And it's gonna be fun.

[marquis]

Would army service not be similar to getting a degree, in that you are focused on a daily bases on core learning? It sounds as if your service experience has been as valuable as some schools.

[radagaisus]

I think it it good for my career. I think it's better to learn theory after a good practice, not before. Otherwise you don't have the context, and you fly into to the clouds without keeping your feed on the ground of I Can Build Stuff With This.