#1) I was in the very same boat and though it is NOT EASY, it is POSSIBLE and possibly VERY REWARDING to go back to school later in your career. I did end up t

#1) I was in the very same boat and though it is NOT EASY, it is POSSIBLE and possibly VERY REWARDING to go back to school later in your career. I did end up taking compilers in part because of this post and it was awesome. Looking back over the course of my education, there are some classes that are simply head and shoulders above the rest in terms of intellectual impact. You come out of every lecture feeling almost punch-drunk from the impact of the ideas that were just imparted to you, as if your head was ringing and your double vision is seeing through the very framework of the universe itself(1). Compilers was one of those classes for me. #2) Coursera may be an option if you can't swing an in-person class. I've taken a handful of classes that way and always found the time well-invested based on how it helped me grow as an engineer. (1) "When Lawrence understood, it was as if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda-the part where Uncle Johann dissects the architecture of the Universe in one merciless descending ever-mutating chord, as if his foot is thrusting through skidding layers of garbage until it finally strikes bedrock. In particular, the final steps of the organist's explanation were like a falcon's dive through layer after layer of pretense and illusion, thrilling or sickening or confusing depending on what you were. The heavens were riven open. Lawrence glimpsed choirs of angels ranking off into geometrical infinity." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14877676 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1487767...