The question, as it was posed, was pretty arrogant and contained an implicit assumption. It assumed that a "self-taught" programmer does not know, or does not h

The question, as it was posed, was pretty arrogant and contained an implicit assumption. It assumed that a "self-taught" programmer does not know, or does not have available to him, certain things that a so-called formally taught programmer does. And that's just not true. Both self-taught and academically taught programmers have access to books, computers, the Internet, peers and tools. Also, there's no black-or-white difference between the two: the academically trained programmer has had some amount of so-called self-teaching, and the self-taught programmer almost always has some amount of academic education. Also, they both have brains, and are able to reason out things for themselves. Many things are learnable by experience, and learnable when needed. Also, there's the point that everything ever put into a textbook was at some point independently discovered or learned by someone, without the benefit of a textbook or academic course -- instead they had to discover it directly or think it up themselves, or derive or synthesize from something else they read or learned previously, sometimes in adjacent or even very different fields. The computer itself is a wonderful teacher. And what the Internet makes available to everybody, regardless of whether inside a university or not, makes even the famous Great Library of Alexandria look pale in comparison. But I overstepped myself. I couldn't possibly have these thoughts, or reach these conclusions, without having been spoon fed it from a professor in a university course. I'm sorry. I forgot my place. Back to the servant kitchens for me.... ...oh look, a book on algorithms, what's that doing in the servant kitchens? I'll sneak a peak when nobody is looking. :)