This is not a helpful comment. Additionally I do not agree - while there is a difference between academically focused individuals and industry focused individuals they absolutely should not be mutually exclusive. That's a social generalization in our industry everyone should be working to dismantle.
I'm an industry programmer and pursued a lot of Comp Sci self-study in order to become a "better programmer", an "effective programmer", and most importantly "better able to reason about my programs".
Being versed in both is important so the reading list, IMHO, should be mixed!
Very well put. I would say the opportunity when self taught is that you can focus on the areas or challenges that excite you the most. "Getting close to the metal with C" is a good example of someone interested in taking things apart and seeing the gears turning the wheel. I studied CS at university specifically to understand how a machine could make chuckie egg jump or dragon ninja kick. You start with Binary, Machine Learning play with some C or Java and suddenly the magic was more than magic - mathematics. Immerse yourself and enjoy it is the most important thing. Back to the point - agreed - programming and computer science can never be mutually exclusive. Everyone's comments on here have me officially addicted to HN. About time.
I'm an industry programmer and pursued a lot of Comp Sci self-study in order to become a "better programmer", an "effective programmer", and most importantly "better able to reason about my programs".
Being versed in both is important so the reading list, IMHO, should be mixed!