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Crazy advice: go to college for something harder/more challenging than CS, and then use that to complement your programming skill later. CS was mostly a waste of time for me. I worked through a lot of SICP in highschool and was teaching myself Haskell after learning a lot of web development stuff. However, I don't regret the formal mathematics classes that I've taken, as well as some interesting electives (like an algebra/number theory course that focused on nothing but using and attacking RSA, which was a joint CS/Math course). Taking Algorithms was good for me too, even if I could already hack on harder stuff than my classmates. So, I major in something other than CS. Keep in mind that you also might decide that you hate working in programming altogether, as I did, so being a generalist might be a good idea. Major in math, philosophy or a foriegn language (or whatever else interests you). You'll learn, have a possible back-up and escape with a degree, if you need one. I think college has become diluted to some degree (I rail against it a lot, even moreso now that my old university did away with English 101 for a lot of majors because it's "too hard"), but you can always challenge yourself. I think people with a passion always can outdo their degrees, especially in CS, but I think viewing your life as: "waste my time at college" xor "go live in the valley" is a really bad idea at this point. |