A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
This is a very strange article and premise to me. A university education is not vocational training. A CS education includes courses in programming, but learning to program—indeed, learning CS—is only a part of the education you are signing up for at university.<p>I arrived at university having already worked for a couple years in open source and a bit of contracting. I worked as a professional programmer throughout my undergraduate degree. I was bored by most of the introductory programming courses. The liberal arts, being around other young adults, the theoretical CS parts, the electrical engineering bits, and some of the project work were the only valuable parts, but that was plenty of value to me.<p>Going to university to learn to program is like going to university to learn refrigerator repair or how to play the guitar. Vocational and on-the-job training will go deeper into the craft. If you only want vocational training, go to a vocational school, get a private teacher, or teach yourself. Don’t go to university just to learn a skill. You certainly can, but it’s not an efficient way to do that. People study music in university to become better rounded musicians, not to learn an instrument. Same with CS.