I agree. Veering slightly off on a tangent but another major (and oft-forgotten and undervalued, I think) advantage of the degree path is that a good course will lead you down the best and possibly most efficient paths of discovery for the important things, and also give you a bit of a kick in directions you maybe wouldn&#x27;t naturally go on your own, but which turn out to be very valuable after some uphill struggling.<p>These are things you can figure out, and discipline yourself into, but on your own time and with a fair probability you won&#x27;t do a great job, when self-learning. With a degree much of that work is outsourced to specialists who have a lot more context and ability to iterate on experience, and that gives you a much smoother path to just focusing on your main job - learning.<p>So, a good compromise, and the reason I ask this question, is to get recommendations on <i>what</i> to learn, then decide myself how I will do it and on what schedule, etc.