I don't know why everyone is lecturing you about not going to college, especially not understanding your personal circumstances. If I were looking at your resum

I don't know why everyone is lecturing you about not going to college, especially not understanding your personal circumstances. If I were looking at your resume for my startup, the "Oh, he's a great programmer who has been building things since he was four" would outweighs the potential, "Oh, he has a CS degree from Stanford" so much the latter wouldn't even move the needle. I'm probably biased, being a college dropout myself, but the employers who weigh those credentials more highly than raw ability or skill set are probably not the ones you want to work for anyway. And let's be honest -- at least right now, it's a programmer's market. You could tie a sign around your neck that says, "I've been programming since I was four and am looking for a job," spend the day walking around San Francisco, and probably have a job offer by the end of the day. It's probably also valuable to hear about college from a dropout's experience. I went for three years, and I hated every minute of it. Every. Single. Minute. I went to a highly respected/ranked private University, admittedly not something Ivy League, and while I definitely learned a lot and met some cool people, I speculate I would have learned more and faster had I jumped headfirst into startups during those years. I wouldn't have taken a Shakespeare class, but that's just one of the many trade-offs you have to make. I was a couple semesters away from graduation, and was half pulled out by a startup taking off and half just couldn't handle it anymore. Half of college was excruciatingly slow and boring, and 1/4 was worthless. I don't say "worthless" in the, "When am I going to use this in my job/real life" sense, but in the "This is busywork and everyone in this room, including the Professor, knows it." The last 1/4 was solid. I won't pretend like college had nothing to offer - I just wonder how much I would have learned had I used 4/4 of my time effectively instead of 1/4. TL;DR - do whatever you want to, and don't let the hivemind of HN convince you otherwise. But I didn't have to tell you that. Now let's meet up and get coffee next time I'm in the Valley :)