I am self-taught so I have limited understanding of the types of degrees engineers usually pursue these days. I do know that more and more universities are offe

I am self-taught so I have limited understanding of the types of degrees engineers usually pursue these days. I do know that more and more universities are offering focused software engineering degrees vs traditional CS degrees. Can anyone comment if these newer degrees are better/worse at imparting the kind of theoretical knowledge of which OP speaks? > engineers putting a lot of logic in their unit tests Like is there a class which is supposed to teach these things? Seems like the kind of thing you have to learn through experience. Regarding being self-taught... I find consistently that I generally outperform other traditionally educated engineers on my teams on a theoretical level, but I think this comes from many, many years of deep reading and small, focused experiments. I also haven't worked with a team comprised of only 99th percentile engineers but I assume that's not very common. I don't even know how all of the nuance which drives sound theoretical frameworks can be imparted to a student in a 4 year curriculum, so I wager that a lot of this is taught on the job. So my next question is, what is the average developer team environment like, is there learning on the job, is emphasis placed on "getting shit done" vs "getting it done right", etc. My career has been entirely startups and independent consulting so I also have little insight into the bulk of the industry. Anyway, I wouldn't discount self-taught engineers. If you know a self-taught engineer who has broken into the professional scene and isn't a junior, they likely have a comprehensive skillset and deep practical knowledge which converts to theoretical knowledge. Many self-taught engineers have a lifetime of experience. I generally agree with you that software engineering today seems less rigorous. I also wonder if the internet is just making it easier to cross-examine engineering practices across the industry, and if there's always been such a distribution of people who deeply care about getting things right vs people who simply see programming as a job that in which they should invest the minimum.