In April I posted Autodidact as a meditation. I wanted to allow for plenty of time of my mind to think about that post and its replies before responding, I think ~6 months is long enough.

While most responses were from people with an autodidact mind set there were a few that were not and I wanted to clarify my own stance on non-autodidact personalities.

It is not bad or good to be an autodidact it is simply a part of your personality. Autodidact's can go to school and get a formal education, but the ability to process and learn on ones own accord is a valuable asset for programmers.

For people that are not autodidact in nature then formal education offers them the ability to grow beyond themselves and create associations that on their own they might not make. This however does not make them any more or less valuable then an autodidact individual it is simply who they are.

There are tasks that require each particular mindset in established fields, but only autodidacts can create fields. That is, an autodidact is always responsible for an emerging technology or combination of existing ones in a unique manner. Curriculum is the formalization of processes developed by autodidacts. Often times the formalization is done by someone other then the originator as well since as pointed out by one of the replies to my original node, autodidacts have sloppy teachers. This is one aspect of my own thought process that I struggle with, where in I don't formalize what I have taught myself and find that I am often relearning a task that I should have made notes on or more thoroughly researched for the more learned way to do it.

So what I am curious about now from other monks is:
  1. What do you feel you are hampered or limited by, either artificially or legitimately.
  2. Do you align yourself more with being an autodidact or non-autodidact.
  3. How has that alignment effected you professionally.
  4. Did you at some point (semi)realign yourself for personal/financial improvement?
  5. If you did realign yourself was it worth the effort and in what way?

In reply to Autodidact Followup by trs80

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