Need? no. Do you need a good working knowledge of what a degree covers? Ideally yes, in practice only parts. Do people with degrees come out "knowing" what th

Need? no. Do you need a good working knowledge of what a degree covers? Ideally yes, in practice only parts. Do people with degrees come out "knowing" what they covered in their degree? often partially, bits are almost completely forgotten as the significance of concepts wasn't really understood till much later.... even if you got A's But, ideally, if you go in to a degree, highly engage with the content, it gives you a structured approach to many ideas and is a great basis for many kinds of programming applications. Can you get the same through being self taught? sure. Though I do see that people won't teach themselves things that don't seem relevant, perhaps some of the mathematical foundations, etc. Which they often don't directly need, but it does limit the brains innovations about possible ways to attack various problems (to be fair, this is the stuff some people with degrees tend to forget). Then, of course, some people teach themselves many things, beyond what a degree would give them.