What you should be worried about is practical experience, not accreditation. The reason why you feel comfortable with a self taught software developer is becau

What you should be worried about is practical experience, not accreditation. The reason why you feel comfortable with a self taught software developer is because you can write and run software on your own. Let's say you got shot. Who would you want to operate on you, someone who went to medical school but probably didn't see too many gunshot wounds, or someone from a field hospital in Iraq who operated on hundreds of cases but does not have a medical degree?