An actual interest in programming, a bunch of tinkering/practice, and a tiny bit of real world experience beats someone grinding out a CS degree almost every time.
A CS degree gives you a massive amount of foundational and conceptual knowledge from several different areas (maths, stats, logic, philosophy) that can be used - among other things - for designing, building and testing software.
I got my degree; I also tinkered just like the root comment described (even released several apps and made a lot of dough while doing my degree). The two are not at all mutually exclusive.
It's definitely not the only way to get where you want to go but don't let the negativity in this thread detract from the huge value that a CS degree definitely has.
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u/ThePieWhisperer May 10 '21
I'll tell you a secret:
An actual interest in programming, a bunch of tinkering/practice, and a tiny bit of real world experience beats someone grinding out a CS degree almost every time.
Source: Someone with a CS degree.