I'm self taught and also went to a boot camp around 8 years ago. Been working since then. I think I'm a pretty decent developer but often wonder if I ought to get a computer science degree (and also constantly kick myself for not staying in school when I was younger).
The amount of free material available on the web or on YouTube is actually mind blowing these days.
I got a CS degree almost 30 years ago (Computer Engineering actually so a mix of hardware and software) and have spent the last 3 years diving back in and relearning things I have a much deeper respect for. Surprisingly little has actually fundamentally changed, btw, in 30 years.
But there are wonderful resources like MIT’s original SICP book at well as video lectures (in glorious 80s retro splendor no less!), the Carnegie Mellon Databaseology courses, there’s a good Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment course, Crafting Interpreters, Smalltalk-80 Bluebook, talks by Alan Kay or Joe Armstrong, etc, etc, etc…
Once you start to get a sense of your own filter, as well as YouTube’s algos getting tuned in for what you actually want… I’ve actually been truly amazed. Lately I’ve been hacking around my own simple VMs and compiler theory in a way that I couldn’t have previously imagined.
