[mikeho1999]

Actually, I don't think it's as much as self-taught vs. formal CS training at a 4-year university vs. some sort of vocational schooling vs. whatever...

I think it's more the question of: what is the driving motivation for getting into the industry in the first place?

The best developers I've worked with and have had the most respect for were ones that have had a lifelong love for computers and computing technology, reflected through things like always tinkering with software (and even hardware), enjoyment in building their own linux boxes, and/or having the proverbial "I've been programming since I was 5" type of story. In my experience, I've found that these type of candidates have the highest chance for success, regardless of the type of formal training that they may or may not have had.

The ones that I'm a bit more suspect on are the ones that think about getting into this industry mostly because of articles like this that focus on the "OMG he's making $$$ 6-figures", but that have never shown much of a prior interest for software, programming, etc.. Basically, for folks in this group, it seems like they get excited for coding only after they've heard stories like this and maybe started checking out Codecademy or decided to take CS 101 because it fulfilled a core / distribution requirement at their 4-year university.

Am I saying that the folks in the second group are not going to be good programmers? By all means no. But I'm just saying as a level of chance vs. risk, I feel that those in the first group have a higher chance of producing as a quality software engineer than those in the second group.

[nbouscal]

I think you're dead on, and I think the reason for it ends up being pretty simple once you dissect it. Programming is an umbrella that covers a huge number of other skills to varying degrees. Many of them we don't even think about day-to-day, because like you said, we've been programming since we were 5.

Easy example: typing speed. I can type ~140 wpm, and I know I'm not alone in that among developers. That doesn't make me a better programmer… but it would probably be a hell of a lot harder to learn how to code if you were still trying to figure out how to type from the home row.

There are plenty of other skills that we don't really think about, but that make our lives as coders way easier. Someone who has never used computers outside of MS Office for high school book reports is going to have a completely different experience learning to code. Even completely mundane things like knowing what Alt+Tab (or Cmd+Tab) does can make a difference in your workflow. Add up all the little things, and you end up with a pretty big gap.