Caveat: I have a doctorate in computer science. Important things to do, regardless of your degree if you want to program for a living: 1. know what the hell yo

Caveat: I have a doctorate in computer science. Important things to do, regardless of your degree if you want to program for a living: 1. know what the hell you are talking about 2. have experience in the things you want to do 3. become known in the community Expanding: 1. If you say that you know what the hell you are talking about, and your O(n^2) algorithm for computing something for someone's app used to work but now falls to pieces with more widgets, then you really don't. Learn how to design and analyze algorithms to fit the task at hand. I don't know how many times I've cleaned up someone's O(n^2) or O(n^3) algorithm to O(n) because either they didn't know the language or just weren't very good, but it's at least 20 times at this point. If you want to self-start, check out MIT's OpenCourseware. It has a free computer science education that will result in zero paper. Lectures are available online for free. 2. Don't just read a bit about a new technology that you want to get a job doing, actually use it. There are free VM solutions that will run on your hardware and OS combination, which will let you run and test any number of software configurations to see what it's like. 3. If you're really using the software, and you don't run into a bug, then you're not really using the software. Report bugs, fix bugs, get involved. Every project needs help; the more you help people, the more you are known; the more you are known, the better your resume. There are people who have never had a problem getting a job without having a degree. And there are some people who haven't been able to get a position, regardless of their degree. Personally, my degrees have opened doors that would otherwise never have been open to me. And the education that I have acquired in school has been invaluable to actually performing my duties as a chief architect. In my experience, there are just some things that you are only likely to have been exposed to during the course of education and related further exploration. Ultimately it's a matter of what you want. Do you want paper? What if the paper can increase your lifetime earning potential (do you care)? What if you are so good that you can do better without the degree slowing you down? If you were 1st or 2nd year, I'd say switch majors. At 4 years... I'd say go with your gut. If you're guts are wrong, at least you went with what you thought was right, and not what others thought.