What he talks about is about learning languages. He says he has gone through seven languages in the past 5-10 years. School lays a deep foundation for programm

What he talks about is about learning languages. He says he has gone through seven languages in the past 5-10 years. School lays a deep foundation for programming. I went back to school to get a CS Bachelors. I took a mathematics course that covered graph theory. In the next class I learned data structures like trees, graphs etc. Another class explained big O notation. Then we learned various algorithms that could tackle things like the eight queens problem, sorting, or using Dijkstra's algorithm on a graph. We saw how different sorting techniques and algorithms had different big O times. We saw how data structures and algorithms interact. All of this is programming, but all of it could be done with a minimal knowledge of a language such as Java. Learning to program is about more then the learning the ins and outs of a language. It seems a common misconception to people new to programming that knowing the syntax and keywords of a language is what programming is about. Good CS programs give you an underlying intellectual framework of what you are doing. Most people on their own do not have the discipline to study what is needed. I spent hours studying the theory of computation and the Ackermann function and the halting function and so forth. Most people on their own who have a choice between studying that hard theoretical stuff for months or working on their new game are going to work on their new game. Also, you don't know you don't know. For example, I had to come up with a hash function recently and was at a loss of what to do. Then it struck me to use Gödel numbers, which I had learned about years before. It worked well (although I barely made it into 32 bits). I would have never thought of that without going to school. Solutions occur to you that never would have without the education.