I am 100% 'Autodidact' (btw, thanks for the definition ;), so this post is actually very interesting to me, especially for where I am at personally right now. I am wrestling with the notion of going to college (essentially for the first time) in pursuit of a CompSci degree. From my perspective(that being the perspective an autodidact - sorry just like that word), I sometimes feel like I am a step behind because of my lack of formal education. Yet sometimes I feel like I grasp concepts behind programming and computing evironments in general better than people that have been studying it for years.

I will say however, that the one thing I think school would provide me that I otherwise have a hard time with is structure. I am eager to learn everything I possible can as quickly as I possibly can and what happens is that I often go in 8 directions at once and don't learn half as much as I could if I focused on one or two things. But, this is also nothing I couldn't learn from a "mentor".

The current resolution to this problem is this: I plan on taking classes in Computers and Mathematics part time(1 or 2 a semester) and continue in the work force as a very comptetent programmer. In the meantime I've invested in some books on C and Unix(time to start REALLY hacking Perl ;) and I'll continue to study computers myself.

I will say this, and to me this outweighs any focusing problems i may (have|have had). By being involved in the programming community('specially Perlmonks.org), I have learned to seek answers for myself rather than have them fed to me. This method is often more difficult, but immensely more gratifying and instructive. I find it more valuable to have people to guide me than instruct me, and I think this philosophy/experience will help me in my career/school.

Great post, trs80. Very timely for me ;).

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Amel