When I was at university, there were a few older students that had come from careers in software development. They were split into two camps: One would study p

When I was at university, there were a few older students that had come from careers in software development. They were split into two camps: One would study part-time over several years to boost the knowledge they already have. The other would use it as a "reset", in order to move into different types of development. Given our location near a bunch of defence contractors and big-name engineering firms, many of these developers were keen to get out of that world, and viewed getting a degree as their chance to jump from low-level development to working on web stuff, or in higher-level languages. I remember one guy that flew through all of his programming assignments, and would spend most of his time chatting to lecturers about C. He was earning money that made student me's eyes water, but he took three years out and moved into building web applications. Within a few years he went from junior to technical manager at a large agency, and now he's heading his own startup. On the .NET front, some of the best .NET developers I've worked with had no degree, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing skills-wise, but I do share your concern that you simply don't know what roles you'll have missed out on due to not having a degree. It's also another layer to throw onto the standard "imposter syndrome" that all developers face. Should you choose to do a degree, my only advice is to budget well. The adjustment from 9-5 to student life is hard enough without having to worry about whether you've got the money to afford that book you really need.