Romania, eh? Well, let me "enlighten" you about this one. Romania IS a tech hub. I don't know how much you've been in the field, but the market here exploded some years ago. We've become an outsourcing paradise. Good, cheap work. Demand is pretty high. So don't worry - you'll get your share. With or without college.
Now the not so cool part: just get that degree, one way or the other. Especially if it's related to the field you want to work in. The govt has some strategies to facilitate graduates into the work market: as a graduate, your employer pays 16% less taxes for IT graduates. You'd LOVE the faces of the HR people when they hear you're not a IT student/graduate.
The above is just one of the more "direct" implications of you having a degree. There are more. As employing goes, the "upper-class" languages (Java, C#, C++) tend to require it. PHP, HTML/CSS, Ruby - not so much.
Another advantage is that the employers here voraciously search for IT students and they grab them even from the second year. They invest in degrees, as those at the very least, guarantees them a basic knowledge, on which they can build, as the student is perceived as a long-term investment.
Then there's the human nuances - future prospects, getting employed outside the country (if you're into that), self-perception (if you're into that, too).
Do you want me to continue?
You are passionate, I can respect that. But college is not about passion or destroying it - it's about market placing (in Romania at least). Sooner or later, you'll think about that. Oh and I heard that IT college can be a blast when it comes to same-minded people. My bet is you'll find lots of passionate people in there.
I'm a Romanian ex-"bum" (wanna hang out?), philosophy and maths college drop-out, now a passionate programmer, having a hard time getting into a Java - mainly because of the degree. I should know.
I was reading all your "I wasted x hours on this" and I rolled my eyes - "My god, these guys fall for everything". Then I tried it. Couldn't sleep. Damn it!
Oh, I see. So synonyms of the word "fat" have real medical definitions. I think it's just that "fat" doesn't sound pretentious enough, so it's not clinical.
Oh, c'mon. I was currently doing the exact same thing the blog post advices against.
I was designing, centralizing, decoupling. Then some changes came about. I implemented them, then watched them fluently rippling throughout the system. "How cool is that?".
It was some time ago when I was an OOP-design junkie (I think it's analogous to puberty: exaggerating). I think I passed that, as I frequently wonder if I'm over-designing and get back to using plain strings, constants etc.
I once read that, designing a plugin (be it a pattern or an actual plugin), try no less than 3 different implementations.
He's right, though. I work with Magento. Try adding a new backend form in that beast.
That was the exact same sentence that changed my whole attitude; and I'm a tolerant guy. It's a pity that "work hard" and "work long hours" are separated only by a comma.
Now the not so cool part: just get that degree, one way or the other. Especially if it's related to the field you want to work in. The govt has some strategies to facilitate graduates into the work market: as a graduate, your employer pays 16% less taxes for IT graduates. You'd LOVE the faces of the HR people when they hear you're not a IT student/graduate.
The above is just one of the more "direct" implications of you having a degree. There are more. As employing goes, the "upper-class" languages (Java, C#, C++) tend to require it. PHP, HTML/CSS, Ruby - not so much.
Another advantage is that the employers here voraciously search for IT students and they grab them even from the second year. They invest in degrees, as those at the very least, guarantees them a basic knowledge, on which they can build, as the student is perceived as a long-term investment.
Then there's the human nuances - future prospects, getting employed outside the country (if you're into that), self-perception (if you're into that, too).
Do you want me to continue?
You are passionate, I can respect that. But college is not about passion or destroying it - it's about market placing (in Romania at least). Sooner or later, you'll think about that. Oh and I heard that IT college can be a blast when it comes to same-minded people. My bet is you'll find lots of passionate people in there.
I'm a Romanian ex-"bum" (wanna hang out?), philosophy and maths college drop-out, now a passionate programmer, having a hard time getting into a Java - mainly because of the degree. I should know.