I think you need to be a little charitable in reading it. I come from the opposite end, I have no college degree and started programming with writing small BAS

I think you need to be a little charitable in reading it. I come from the opposite end, I have no college degree and started programming with writing small BASIC apps on a calculator in middle school. I used to think I wasn’t a “real” programmer when I was in school because there was so much I didn’t know. But in retrospect 18 year old me was better prepared for an actual programming job than a lot of the new grads I’ve worked with. It’s not to say there weren’t huge gaps in my knowledge, but the thing is, actually writing code completely transforms you as a developer. A “programmer” that hasn’t ever worked on a project end to end is completely different than one who’s churned through one day in and day out for even a year. I’ve watched new grads make that transformation and it’s amazing. School will make you a better professional, and if you have a passion for it, let you additionally get you enough experience to hop straight into being a programmer confidently , but not everyone has that passion. - The same way I didn’t have enough passion except to do exactly as much was needed to let me write code in a professional setting, some students only have enough passion to get a degree which will let them be a professional and don’t really care that much about being able to execute right out of the gate. I don’t think either is less “noble” as the other, I was too lazy to get the fundamentals, I understand someone being just happy to get a degree, but both paths have very different effects based on the field (I mean, my path would be a dead end in most fields)