[vladms]

The problem with "learned everything ourselves" is that you might have niche interests and you miss things. Things I learned that probably I wouldn't have by done by myself: computer architecture (memory, buses, cpu-s, instruction set), and related VHDL/Verilog; how complex is synchronization (implementing from scratch synchronization libraries); different programming paradigms (functional languages); compilers & operating systems (kernel modules, etc.); various types of maths (dsp); algorithm complexity analysis.

Some I ended up using more during my career than others, but knowing more definitely reduced my tendency to think "ah, that should be easy".

[ttoinou]

Benefits of learning online yourself is that you're self motivated and you get access to the best resources (better than the teacher you are forced to listen to)

[jrowen]

But what is the teacher teaching from? Generally they are working off seminal and highly-regarded texts that the autodidact set would tell you to read anyway.

I will grant you that the current form of the education system, especially in light of how easy it is to engage with the primary resources nowadays, is massively inefficient and needs an overhaul to provide more individualized learning. Something like Alpha School is promising in this regard. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Even if a kid today learns entirely "on their own" with an AI teacher...neither them nor the AI accumulated that knowledge, and we still need that infrastructure of people contributing to advancing and refining the shared knowledge base.