Self taught developers may also underestimate what a cs degree confers. They may not know specific frameworks, but they probably know more than you about compil

Self taught developers may also underestimate what a cs degree confers. They may not know specific frameworks, but they probably know more than you about compilers, formal grammars, machine learning and stuff like that. I think you'd be surprised by the wide variation in both the CS graduate and self-taught pools. Lots of overlap on that matter. There are a lot programmers who understand CS quite well but studied other topics in school. There are also plenty of CS programs that don't seem to be turning out a lot of competent engineers. Hell, there are PhDs who can't even code. Knowing the fundamentals is important-- often, it's extremely valuable, because you need that stuff to hit the high notes-- but if it doesn't come with practical abilities pertaining to how to write code, learn new libraries, and pick up technologies, then it's just book-learning that's already probably 10 years old.