I didn't have the option to get a degree, no one told me about loans or how to get them, lots of people told me I wasn't "college material", and I kind of stopp

I didn't have the option to get a degree, no one told me about loans or how to get them, lots of people told me I wasn't "college material", and I kind of stopped talking to my parents at 18. It's possible I could have figured out logistically how to pay for school at 18 with no parental support, but, I didn't. If you have any kind of support structure that will help you pay for or borrow (cheaply! and not too much!) for your college education, as someone who started working with no degree and then got their degree, I strongly recommend that you get your degree. I found good jobs without a degree, though it was largely through luck and networking. If you don't have a degree the "normal people" channels are closed to you and you have to use connections and people you know. of course, the "normal people" channels are for suckers so this is probably for the best... After a few years of working professionally without a degree, I went back and worked on my degree part time. I'm finishing now. I went to a pretty good school (in the top 15 for CS) and I took pretty hard classes with a minor in math. I think that the experience helped make me a better software person. There were definitely concepts in algorithm design and data structures that I might not have experienced professionally, professors were really smart and I could go to their office hours and talk about real-world problems, and I think that learning more about math helped me think better. I was (mostly) intelligent about what gen-eds to take and where (at a community college) so that the time and money value was maximized. I think it was a good investment. There are many jobs that you will be locked out of without a degree. Some people might say, all the better, but those environments can also be one of the few places doing something you really want to work on, like a university or national lab. Good luck finding a startup that is doing pure R&D in CS...