If your developing web applications its completely possible to be self-taught and produce high quality applications.
I was always into technology and was doing PHP + MySQL professionally before I left high school. I still decided to go to college for business. So I learn a lot of valuable business insight I would of normally overlooked.
The one thing I regret is that I didn't have the chance to be surrounded by intelligent tech-savvy people; instead its mostly just kids who belong in high-school who will fit well into their boring corporate jobs.
On the other hand, if people go into the profession solely because the pay prospects are good then there will be a huge influx of mediocre developers. That's no good for anybody.
What's killing me right now is the geographical bias of the whole thing. I'm in St. Louis currently and the job market seems pretty stagnant. What jobs are available tend to be with the megacorporates like A.G. Edwards, CitiGroup, and MasterCard. There are a minority of consulting gigs available.
SliceHost is the one major exception I know of for St. Louis.
> If your developing web applications its completely possible to be self-taught and produce high quality applications.
it's all ones and zeros, how hard can it be ?
i, just press the right key at the right time, and the program practically writes itself (with apologies to beethoven).
I was always into technology and was doing PHP + MySQL professionally before I left high school. I still decided to go to college for business. So I learn a lot of valuable business insight I would of normally overlooked.
The one thing I regret is that I didn't have the chance to be surrounded by intelligent tech-savvy people; instead its mostly just kids who belong in high-school who will fit well into their boring corporate jobs.