[tracker1]

As someone without a formal education in this path, I mostly agree...

It took almost a decade before I would have considered myself very good... And in fairness, many of those even with formal education I wouldn't consider good. Passion accounts for a lot. I didn't start getting really good until I actually started deeper reading into more conceptual bits of programming, and some of the hard math still isn't the easiest for me, fortunately a lot of real world work doesn't need it so much in practice.

In development, with sufficient drive and without formal education, you'll spend 4-5 years just mastering your tools (the languages you tend to use, your environment for development and deployment etc)... and another 4-5 years on deeper understanding of the craft itself... even then you'll be missing on some of the deeper more low-level understanding.

There's room in this world for both, but if you can get a formal education without amassing hundreds of thousands in debt, I'd say go for it. Just don't think you'll be done learning when you graduate (I still spend at least 10-20 hours a week reading on software/tech), and accept that you will have to break every rule in practice during a career.

[paul_milovanov]

I know a really successful, world-class, senior Google engineer who doesn't have a high-school diploma. He's very smart and incredibly hard-working, a great mentor and an inspiration to others. He's also probably been lucky.

Could that be you, the OP? Of course.

Could that be the right path for someone who can't stand formal learning environments and thrives on the challenge of real problems? Sure.

Is it very hard and risky? Yes, in all sorts of ways. You need great mentors and people that will show you how much you don't know. If you accidentally end up surrounded by mediocrity, it's very easy to fall prey to Dunning-Kruger effect. How do you get to work with world-class engineers? It's a catch-22 although not impossible. Universities, on the other hand, are by design a place with many smart people, and you're not expected to have anything other than potential to join.

(And yes, absolutely, if you decide that you're done learning after graduating, good luck with your future hardship. Unless you first learn COBOL, in which case you might still be able to comfortably ride on it for another 20 years)