40 years writing software for a living, dropped out of college after 3 years. I'd taken all the CS that I could, and took graduate level courses my last year be

40 years writing software for a living, dropped out of college after 3 years. I'd taken all the CS that I could, and took graduate level courses my last year because I had run out of other interesting classes. That final year of school just didn't look important compared to getting my dream job at the time (writing games for Atari). No real regrets, though I had (and still have) a sense of inferiority that drives me to study. Last year I threw out many boxes full of papers that I've read over the years (they're mostly available online now). I have bookcases and bookcases of CS-related material. I've read Knuth, etc. (okay, still going through Vol 4...). My only regrets are not getting a better math background (a decent calculus-based probability and statistics course would have helped). I took linear algebra in school, but didn't really get it until I started doing graphics and then I needed much more than my college course provided anyway. Tried going back to school a couple of times. Work always got the better of me. Finally I realized that the degree just wasn't important to myself or my employers, and that I wouldn't learn anything anyway. Lack of a degree has never been a problem when finding a job (except once, and I actually felt pretty good about that one . . . maybe I'll tell the story some day). I think the key to long-term success (whether you have a degree or not) is continuing self-education. I try to keep up by reading papers and digging into promising new tech. The industry is bigger and moving faster these days, so you have to pick and choose what to stay current on. It's a good idea to branch out anyway (if you read ten papers on storage, networking or graphics, read a couple on something unrelated, like AI or queuing theory or dig into biology or astrophysics -- stretch your head). Helps to do different types of projects, too. I plan to work until I drop; I feel fantastically lucky to have found a career that I enjoy this much. My father-in-law retired from writing code at age 75, I think I can go longer.