Ask HN: Self Taught and Already Employed Developer – Should I Go Back to School?

2 points

10 years ago

I'm in my late twenties, I have two degrees in philosophy, and I spent one year doing a PhD before dropping out (funding; poverty; depression; just wasn't good for me ). I always had an interest in programming and taught myself some basic python and javascript when I was a teenager, wrote all my papers in LaTeX, and used Linux as my OS since I was 16.

When I left academia I moved in with family with the aim of taking a 1 year masters conversion course in computer science. However, before I even applied I managed to get a job as a contractor at a well known consultancy. I happened to learn a particular javascript library that isn't too easy to learn and was in demand.

I have now been employed as a contractor with this firm for just over a year, and in that time I have learned a lot. I also absolutely love my new career and I am motivated to get better at it so I can keep doing it.

Most other developers are very surprised when I tell them my background and I keep getting pushed into senior-ish developer roles (maybe because of my age, and because I have a beard \_(ツ)_/¯). Despite only having a year of experience, I'm in some ways a much better programmer than some of my 'on paper' betters that have years of experience and CS degrees.

However, I also feel very stunted compared to my peers. I don't have a grasp of algorithms and my mathematics is patchy, my understanding of databases is poor, and my experienced with compiled languages is 100 line toy applications. I'm basically stuck in mostly front-end development building SPAs using React and using nodejs for some simple server side scripting.

I want to make this a career that can last and I want to get away from the front-end where I don't have a flair for design that seems to be expected from me. Despite now having a lot of experience, should I take a year out and take a course like this one to further my chances: