I am an autodidact. It might seem unreal, but I think it gives me more freedom. Not the freedom I don't have to follow some predefined school books, but freedom in thinking. Most CS students learn some language that in theory is best, like Java. However, that restricts them to a certain way of thinking, and I'm glad I don't have to think that way. For example, I do not care how many conditionals a piece of code has, but many CS students learn that any routine with more than ten conditionals should be refactored. I care about readability, efficiency and whether it works or not, not about some set of rules.

There is a reason that I hate Python's syntax. It enforces style, just like how organized progamming education does. There IS more than one way to do it, and I would like to know all of them.

I have no idea how autodidacts can digest material quicker than others. I think it depends on the data you have to munge. If you taught yourself, you may not know about the more difficult (and hyped) standards like XML, but you may have more experience using GDBM instead.

I'm having a problem soaking up new technologies. There is no school that tells me what technologies are out there, and I seem to pick the unhyped ones, which is not really a good idea when profit is your goal :)

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
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