My personal experience is that the best, most imaginative software developers are mostly self-taught.
Passion for the topic is very important because a lot of what we do for a living is un-charted, un-mapped territory. The passion is required to get past mediocre.
I am a self-taught programmer. I tried to learn in school but my mind wasn't quite molded to the way programming teachers taught back then (1985-ish). So years later I re-visited programming on my own after DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 came out.
I got the bug and eventually became a professional. I now work on a large magnificent software library used by millions of people whether they know it or not (I won't say what it is).
I consider it a privilege and part of the journey to work with passionate, self-taught people who paved the way.
There would be a lot of empty seats without superstars if we only accepted Ivy types or excluded the self-taught.
I just couldn't be in this field if that were the case.
I'm speaking as a self-taught guy who has gone pretty far.
First of all, all good programmers have the ability to teach themselves, because this is the definition of a good programmer. People who stick with what they knew three years ago are obsolete.
So the question is whether the pure autodidact strategy is a good idea. It isn't. There are far, far more failed or incompetent self-taught programmers than there are failed CS students. Observe the "Teach yourself X in Y days" bookshelf and the kind of programmer they produce. Could they have sucked less with better instruction? We'll never know.
Also, the stuff you learn on the job is nothing like the depth of knowledge you get from taking a real course. The rule of thumb is that 3 years on the job equals one year of university. And I find that to be about right. After more than 10 years of doing this professionally, I'm vaguely the equal of a really good Stanford grad. I have many more tricks up my sleeve, but they know a few things very very well. Passion works up to a point, but part of the job is also learning the really boring stuff that nobody likes.
So yeah, I do think I'm maybe more "original" just by dint of having a different background. But there are penalties for that too.
I'm also a self-taught programmer, but I think that our shared view that people like us are more imaginative, etc. is biased due to our personal experiences.
I have more academic qualifications than you can shake a medium sized stick at, and was largely self taught and continue to be largely self taught. My experience as a TA was that a disturbing number of my students had enormous entitlement complexes and thought of programming as a way to get their ticket stamped and get into a "good job". The few who were really interested in the work usually didn't need my help, or when they did it was more like "can you get a 2nd pair of eyeballs here? I'm too close to this to figure out what's wrong".
I'm self-taught too, and so is the best programmer I know by a long way (not me, I suck).
The guy I went to uni with who did CS to completion? He's writing printer drivers for Canon. And hell, good for him. He's got a nice apartment, he has nice dinner parties, he has a nice wife. Good for him!
But all the entrepreneurial types I know are self-taught.
I think there are A LOT of people who are self thought and terrible programmers. But the few that are self thought and great obviously always had extraordinary potential and not getting formal training could never hold them back.
9 our of 10 business fail, so the vast majority of entrepreneur suck big time. But of those that succeed people who work better under self direction are over represented because those who exceed even when managed are also currently busy succeeding.
I know plenty of successful entrepreneurs who had long and successful careers in corporate America.
I know plenty of brilliant hackers who bailed on school because everyone there was hopelessly behind them.
I know plenty of brilliant hacker who graduated from MIT.
I also know a few MIT engineers who make me wonder how the hell they got through MIT. Not only do they suck in the real world but they are also lacking some very basic academic concepts. Did they forget them, did they ever learn them? Who knows.
Passion for the topic is very important because a lot of what we do for a living is un-charted, un-mapped territory. The passion is required to get past mediocre.
I am a self-taught programmer. I tried to learn in school but my mind wasn't quite molded to the way programming teachers taught back then (1985-ish). So years later I re-visited programming on my own after DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 came out.
I got the bug and eventually became a professional. I now work on a large magnificent software library used by millions of people whether they know it or not (I won't say what it is).
I consider it a privilege and part of the journey to work with passionate, self-taught people who paved the way.
There would be a lot of empty seats without superstars if we only accepted Ivy types or excluded the self-taught.
I just couldn't be in this field if that were the case.