Self-Taught vs College-Educated Programmers: Who's More Effective?

If you’re just a normal person who doesn’t know much about coding, you would probably think that those programmers who went to college are better then those who are self-taught. I mean, they went to college, they must know more than those who have learned it by themself. In reality, the answer is not that simple.

First and probably the most important thing is why are they programmers in the first place. Most self-taught programmers don’t learn to code to get a job, they learn it to build their own project, and that’s how most of the startups are built. Because of that, they have a lot of motivation and they quickly gain real-world experience.

On the other hand, you have college programmers, which are also good, but most of them went there to get a job at some company, there are only a few of them that are passionate about coding outside the college. And in most of the cases, they are less ambitious to start their companies, because they get a job after college relatively easily.

Why is some programmer better than others? Is that because he knows more theoretical things and is probably a better worker for others or it’s because he has some ideas that he is willing to try and maybe build a company out of them. Believe it or not, most people don’t think that it’s possible to build their own company, so they don’t even try, where in reality it is.

So for me personally, there can be a programmer who maybe knows more and is a better worker, but if he’s not thinking how he could create their own app or something, he’ll spend his whole life working there. In my opinion, the better programmer is one who doesn’t necessarily know more, but he’s willing to try to do something by himself and make use of his coding skills. And even if he fails, he has tried and probably learned something. Remember, only opportunities that you miss are the ones that you don’t try.

I don’t know about you, but I personally learn something much better if I’m learning it by myself and I want to learn it, rather than somebody telling me that I need to learn something. So I think that self-taught programmers learn easier and better because nobody told them to do that, they want to do it on their own.

However, learning to code the self-taught way can be a problem for most people, most people aren’t motivated enough to start learning something they don’t have a clue about, that’s why a lot of people end up going to college. In my opinion, college is worse than self-taught, but if you are not self-disciplined it may be a better option. But if think that you can do it alone through the self-taught path, here are a couple of courses that might help you:

All programmers are great, it doesn’t really matter how they’ve learned it, but most of the programmers that found their own companies are self-taught (that sounds like they’re better, in my opinion), and if you’re self-disciplined enough, it may be the better way. On the other hand, if you aren’t self-disciplined enough, going to college or working on self-discipline may be the best option.

I hope that I have helped you with this article. If you liked this article, make sure to share it with your friends.

Also, If you think that I’ve missed something, just post your question in the comments below.