[glimshe]

This is not true. There is a fairly strong correlation between formal education and ability as a developer, and I say this as someone with close to 2 decades of experience in the problem space. A CS/STEM degree, as degree quality (where the degree was obtained), makes an enormous difference in the average case.

People who say the opposite are thinking of developers, often themselves, who were able to become skilled without a CS degree. That is indeed quite possible, and I've met many individuals in this category. I'm not going to say the best developers I've met had no degree, but I've met great developers without a degree. But I wouldn't say it is common; most developers without a CS/STEM degree whom I've met were, indeed, mediocre engineers that often had no business being there.

I've also met many poor developers from great schools and great developers from schools with poor reputation. But, as a thought experiment, if I was to pick a developer based solely on whether they have a degree and where they got this degree, lacking any other piece of information, I'd always pick the ones with a degree from a reputable school.

[ZephyrBlu]

They said "some of the best and most prolific developers". The average case is meaningless. Self-taught developers who thrive are almost certainly above average.

If you discriminate based on having a CS degree, you are lopping off a big portion of the right tail which is where all the people you actually want to hire are.

[wongarsu]

In my experience the best developers are self-taught programmers who then went on to get a CS degree. Probably followed by people who got a STEM degree and then went on to become self-taught programmers (with a jump-start from the little programming they learned in their STEM degree). Getting good with only a CS degree or only self-learning is much tougher, though of course there are examples of both.