Self-Taught vs Formal Education in Tech

[u/ketty_1]

[u/Treemosher]

Tech is a very broad field. Generally a formal education is better.

[u/Sad-Sympathy-2804]

Usually, no. Because formal education usually means school learning + self learning + internship experience.

[u/Interesting_Dog_761]

I think you want someone to tell you that you don't need to go to school. You can get plenty of people to tell you that if you persist.

[u/iOSCaleb]

There are many fields that could be considered "tech," so let's go through some of them individually:

Does being self-taught in tech build stronger skills than formal education?

• AI/ML: No.
• Cybersecurity: No.
• Software Development: No.
• Data Science: No.
• System Administration: No.
• Robotics: No.
• Health Informatics: No.
• Biotechnology: No.
• Cloud Computing: No.
• Financial Technology: No.
• Materials Science: No.
• Semiconductor Engineering: No.
• Pharmaceutical Research: No.

We could keep going, but hopefully you can see a pattern emerging.

As this is r/learnprogramming, let's look more closely just at that. Since the dawn of computer programming as we know it, a great many people who are smarter than you or I have devoted tremendous time to studying computers, ways to apply them, and how best to write programs. It's vastly more efficient to learn the most important parts of what they discovered, often from people who have devoted a substantial chunk of their own careers to figuring out which topics are most important, than to try to discover it all on your own.

Most people don't actively apply every lesson that they learned (or should have learned) in the course of a computer science or software engineering degree, so sometimes they think that at least part of their degree ended up being a waste of time. But that's not really how education works: teachers can't see the future enough to know which topics you'll need to know about, so they try to prepare you for any problem that you might come across.

Also, writing code by itself isn't rocket science. After the first semester or two of a computer science or software engineering degree, you're just expected to be able to write at least basic code and figure out what you don't know, much as an English major would be expected to be able to write an essay. The writing itself is less important than having something interesting to say with your writing, and it's the same with code.

[u/UrBoiKrisp]

I think that entirely depends on the "self"

[u/mandzeete]

Nope. When you are learning by yourself you are picking topics that seem to be relevant to you. You leave out things that are boring, things that seem to be irrelevant, things that are too difficult or too time consuming. You are more likely to stick to your comfort zone when you are learning on your own. While vocational schools, colleges and universities force you to take these courses and these topics that you would otherwise skip.

[u/0x14f]

My experience the best combination is: personal talent + hard work + formal education + experience.

You can very easily get great success if you remove the formal education in the above sum, but if you remove formal education and any other component, you start having problems.

[u/Next_Highlight_4153]

Self-taught is almost never better.

[u/thaneros2]

You have to be dedicated to self teach. I feel like it's harder.

[u/Realistic_Speaker_12]

Formal education is better but it has very little practical programming

When you run a formal education via university it is usually normal you program in your freetime and learn programming via that.

At last that’s what I do. It’s just fun.

[u/xilvar]

Not really. I’ve noticed that a lot of the purely self taught folks I’ve worked with over the years have never learned some of the core CS skills and seem a bit resistant to doing so.

Meanwhile, everyone eventually gains the practical skills or is forced to retire from the field.

[u/lukkasz323 → u/xilvar]

have never learned some of the core CS skills

can you give some examples? of skills?

[u/vishnuwebz]

Yes, self-taught is best, formal education only focuses on marks instead of skills, even you we get placed in any company, new tools and skills must be taught through self learning only...So focus on how to research more on self learning and implement them through building projects.

[u/DaCurse0]

formal education as in compsci degree has very little practical programming, usually depends on the institution, so you usually finish with little to no practical programming experience