These self-taught developers 🥰🥰😂

Yeah, I mean imagine just learning from books and online tuts... when you could have paid some institution to tell you to read books and online tuts.

@spongegeoff Imagine people claiming they are self-taught frontend developers after completing a single online tutorial and creating a personal webpage from a template.

@spongegeoff imagine having any level of verification of their skills

All of the best devs I have worked with have been self-taught. By contrast, nearly every one of the worst devs I’ve ever met went to college for it because the field pays well.

Self-taught devs usually have a passion for programming. Not only do they study on their own, they discover new and better ways on their own, and generally just learn more quickly because they genuinely want to.

College tends to teach outdated crap, and doesn’t have a focus on efficiency, and certainly not on clean code. You also don’t get many code reviews from professors or your fellow students. Without passion, they strive to pass the class, not master the material.

There is overlap, of course, but given that colleges teach outdated material for exorbitant prices, there isn’t a lot of overlap.

@Hack I suppose anyone can claim to be something they're not. Certainly possible to be qualified on paper and have near-zero ability.
@AlgoRhythm If only the qualifications meant you had the skills...

Imagine going to an institution that spends a significant amount of time telling you are worthless as a person because you are some kind of galactic accident. I went to a tech school where I missed most of the detestable indoctrination that is being passed off as degrees these days. I also see a trend of people thinking you cannot learn and be knowledgeable about a subject because I didn't get a degree from these dystopian institutions. It is purely marketing that is pushed upon the impressionable to believe that colleges are the gatekeepers of optimal learning.

The fact is, every person is self taught. The individual puts themselves into a situation where they can uptake and internalize the information. If the best way to do this for an individual is a structured classroom I am all for it. For myself I find a mixture of books, references, and lectures I find online to work well. It is helpful to ask questions and I see online forums fullfilling this need.

@Demolishun I agree, everyone is self taught. If you can't learn by yourself you can't survive for long in our industry. Collages teaches you disicpline about some topics. If you are disciplined enough to learn whatever it takes to be good at your profession, there is only small reasons to go to a collage. But average person is lazy (like me) and won't learn everything about software development.

@hack There is value in regimented learning to push through topics. Maybe that is valuable for a base set of knowledge.

who isn't a self taught dev? development is mostly about researching (aka googling ) and piracy (aka copy paste)

@Root I got a college degree but a lot of my skills came from self teaching lol

@dotenvironment yeah learning shouldn’t stop when you put down the compsci book. If it does, you’re sunk career wise

@Root It does not matter all that much.

Most go to school to get the degree.

And most companies when recruiting, they ask for degrees. They probably will hire one with a degree faster than one that has no degree and 'self taught'.

Even if the 'self-taught' person can make better code.

Most of the time, it is also that in school (at least here in Belgium) the course is a recognized way of measuring someones skill and ability to learn and understand what you are doing.

With self-taught, it is much harder to judge the skill and picking up 'bad' habits is also more dangerous. (That doesn't mean everything is wrong ;) )

@Grumm Definitely not the case here in the states, at least from what I’ve seen. Also, just chatting with a dev is often enough to determine their skill level, and ofc seeing some code / pairing with them.

@Root Sure, that is probably the case most of the times.

I can remember the first job I got was in a total different language than learned in school.

Most devs can adapt pretty quickly to a different language as long as the fundamentals of programming are learned.

@Grumm Yeah. And likewise: one of my first jobs had me writing Perl despite never seeing it prior. I kind of enjoyed it.

Interviews can't test everything, a college degree shows some level of commitment, not necessarily skills and is a safer gamble, but a good self-taught and motivated developer is always preferred.

@Root now you mention it the vast majority of really good devs I’ve worked with are all self taught too.

Honestly I've seen a lot more self taught engineers that were extremely good than college educated ones.

Bootcamps folks are garbage though. Went in it for the money, like the college kids.

The only problem with self taught engineers is that they may lack vocabulary. They'll implement hash tables without knowing it's called that, or they'll be able to tell a function is shit without being able to tell it's O notation.

But they're way more hardworking, can solve basically any problem, and are way more thorough. They also understand that coding is a social activity and comment and document their work very well.

But yeah some college engineers can be fine, usually they were self taught before going to college though.

Let's just say it simply: college devs have education/skills.

Self taught have talent and passion.

There is a clear winner between the two.

@Frankistan why there has to be two types? Can't a passionate talented guy go to collage and boost his skills? Does all self taught devs have talent?

There is no winner here. You can't suggest some random person "don't go to collage, just learn it all by yourself!". Collage is a learning tool. While it does not teaches everything neither an online tutorial. Its almost like choosing programming language to solve a problem; what ever suits best for the job.

@hack like I said I've seen great college guys who often were self taught before they went to college.