And I wonder if often better. There is value to having the motivation to learn something before being formally trained in it. I was not too impressed with som

And I wonder if often better. There is value to having the motivation to learn something before being formally trained in it. I was not too impressed with some of my peers in CS, especially those who could not figure out how to open a file in C in their senior year. I was self-taught, then formally trained, and since self-taught. I would have to say that both have value and that you are missing something without the formal education. "Confidence" is a good reason, but exposure is important, too. I am sometimes surprised when the college math pops up in my work, spanning anywhere from programming drivers PCI cards to web interfaces. Work with a large enough dataset, and maybe you will need to make use of a different sort from the language-included "quicksort" algorithms. I thought I could my way out of a paper sack before getting the CS degree. I ended up learning a few things, some trivial, some useful and connecting. You could probably pick it all up up in a couple decades, but four years is a nice jumpstart. Simultaneously, the learning of approaches and techniques does not end there. For example, I sometimes wish my university had made mention of MOP instead of presenting OOP only the C++, Java, and Ada way. I think there is a difference between people who can accomplish tasks and people who can accomplish those tasks in a way that they can be easily extended and maintained in the future; in one respect, we can call that experience, and in another, we can call that an exposure to enough approaches/patterns that it is easier to select the best for the job. Any jumpstart is a huge help and can aid in removing the bad habits learned from solo experimentation.