[niborgen]

Out of curiosity: were you taught how to program properly in university? I'm grappling with the question if colleges should, or if it should be left to 'the school of life'.

I'm grateful for the more theoretical courses that I attended instead.

[jbverschoor]

I learned programming by myself using magazines, borland documentation, x2oulu.fi, win95 api book, bao 3d games programming, and reading the java api.

The fastest growth I experienced was while working at an internet startup around '00.

I only recently got a CS degree just to check off the box. I enjoyed it, and I thought the material was pretty good. Some things were explained very well, other things could've been better, but overall the theory side and some algorithms were pretty ok.

On the programming side... Let's just say I'd rather hire anyone (a teenager, or 60 year old) who enjoys writing code than someone with just a CS degree and no ack for programming.

College, imo, is the wrong vehicle for knowledge transfer/acquisition for a lot of subjects. University Apprenticeship is the way to go.