Long answer: it's hard to know for certain. I chose Computer Science as my major having done very little programming. I didn't do any serious programming until my intro to programming course my first semester. I did some programming in a high school course, but really, my start as a programmer coincided with the start of my formal education.
But during my education, I was exposed to things I doubt I would have encountered on my own. In particular, what I learned from my programming languages, compilers and operating systems courses. In fact, if it had not been for my programming language course, I don't know if I would have realized how much I like thinking about how to express concepts in code. If it wasn't for my graduate studies, I doubt I would have become so comfortable with systems programming and performance in general.
I'm also a biases person to ask because I'm close to getting my Ph.D. I have a Bachelor's and a Master's. So I've done a decent amount of schoolin'.
The problem with being self-taught is sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. I know it sounds boring, predictable and constraining to learn a menu of concepts. But the benefit is that lots of people who came before you decided "these things are important to know to be in our field."
(Hope you see this reply, I didn't realize you replied until just now.)
Long answer: it's hard to know for certain. I chose Computer Science as my major having done very little programming. I didn't do any serious programming until my intro to programming course my first semester. I did some programming in a high school course, but really, my start as a programmer coincided with the start of my formal education.
But during my education, I was exposed to things I doubt I would have encountered on my own. In particular, what I learned from my programming languages, compilers and operating systems courses. In fact, if it had not been for my programming language course, I don't know if I would have realized how much I like thinking about how to express concepts in code. If it wasn't for my graduate studies, I doubt I would have become so comfortable with systems programming and performance in general.
I'm also a biases person to ask because I'm close to getting my Ph.D. I have a Bachelor's and a Master's. So I've done a decent amount of schoolin'.
The problem with being self-taught is sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. I know it sounds boring, predictable and constraining to learn a menu of concepts. But the benefit is that lots of people who came before you decided "these things are important to know to be in our field."
(Hope you see this reply, I didn't realize you replied until just now.)