Tough question to answer without knowing more about you. Graduating high school and going directly into industry will give you some real world experience. Prof

Tough question to answer without knowing more about you. Graduating high school and going directly into industry will give you some real world experience. Professional development is very different from hobby development. Professional development means accepting projects and technologies that may be of no interest to you but the company needs them. If you're doing in-house IT development, you may spend a large part of your time doing systems analysis, operations, and support work. Your employer isn't truly concerned about your trying new technologies; it wants people who support its own technologies and that's where you'll be focused. Gauging your interest in these compromises, before committing 4 years and $75K for example, will save you a lot of frustration later on. Depending on your employer, you may be able to get the company to foot some of the bill if you decide to go the college route later. On the other hand, college has several positive sides. You get to experiment and fail with little consequence. (Largely, the ability to fail and learn has been driven out of the office place since I started 23 years ago.) You get to network with others around your age who have an interest in the field. You can study other subjects that may/may not help you in the field but they interest you anyway. Lastly, you have the degree to build on in case you want to do more advanced study later in life. My caution is not to make your decision based on fear. You will do well either way so long as you work hard and stay curious. Just be aware of the trade offs. Good luck.