I've also run into people who don't know what a transaction or foreign-key constraint is, and who don't know what big-Oh notation even means. I agree that web d

I've also run into people who don't know what a transaction or foreign-key constraint is, and who don't know what big-Oh notation even means. I agree that web development doesn't require a CS degree, and I agree that CS degrees don't teach you the main things you need to know. What I'm saying is that that is a negative indicator of the state of the profession. We don't have a proper degree program, so we hire self-taught people, but we don't have any standard way of determining if those self-taught people actually know what they're doing. The problem isn't with self-teaching per se, but with the complete lack of standardization. One method of standardizing a professional education is to route it through college, but as you've noted, CS degrees don't accomplish that for aspiring web developers. Another way is certifications, but we don't really have any of those either. I'm not arguing for any particular solution, I'm just arguing that there is a problem.