| I have a degree! Well, a political science degree. So in my experience the answer is no. I would caution you, however, about this: > I've been programming for about 4 years now, and in that time I've been able to learn a lot about programming. Obviously not everything, but still a very in depth technical knowledge. I know that if I went to college, a lot of what I know would be repeated To paraphrase Hamlet (which is the kind of thing poli sci majors are required by law to do), "there are more things in a good CS program, tanishalfelven, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." No matter how much you've learned in four years of self-directed learning, I can almost guarantee there's a lot more stuff you haven't learned. I've been programming since the mid-1980s, and I'm still learning stuff every day. And the stuff that a good CS program would expose you to is precisely the stuff that you don't know you don't know. Fundamental stuff that goes beyond the latest hip framework. There's been several times in my career where I've found that not having that kind of grounding has made my work harder. Times where I had to sweat and struggle to figure things out that someone with a good CS education could solve just by pulling an algorithm out of their bag of tricks. If I'd learned those things in school, I'd almost certainly be a better -- and better-paid! -- programmer than I am today. So yeah, you can be a programmer without a CS degree. But if you know you want to be a programmer, and you have a chance to get one from a good school? Grab that chance with both hands. |
Sorry if I sounded to arrogant. I understand that my mighty 4 years is nothing compared to a lot of people here. Thank you for considerations.