[famahar]

I have a lot of respect for self learners. Don't think I would have learned to code if I didn't feel the financial and academic pressure from learning it in University. I still remember my intro course being so mind numbingly difficult coming from an arts background. Simple if else code block assignment that I could complete in 1 minute now took me a whole weekend to initially do 10 years ago.

[jdefr89]

When it comes to programming we are all self learners because no one teaches you how to write the software you might want to write… Getting taught merely means getting exposed to. The real teaching of something happens when you do it on your own… Taught my self to code in 6th grade and was able to drop out of college to work.. Started and sold my own company. I have to say the CS/CE curriculum is severely lacking and in all honesty not many benefit from it. Someone coming out of school with a bachelors doesn’t seem to be able to translate their “learned” skills into real working knowledge. That can only happen when you actually do what you want to do. Grab a bunch of CS and grads and ask them to write a simple FizzBuzz and you will be astonished at how many barely know where to start. It’s quite sad. Ironically I am now a researcher at MIT… I am in academia and didn’t even finish my degree…