I'm an autodidact as far as programming goes, and I know many others, and so far I haven't found anything indicating that autodidacts like me (who learn unstructured) are inferior to those who learned programming in university or other courses.

(Update: Perl is IMHO very well suited for learning in small steps, because just like human languages you can say very much with a small vocabulary, but the programs become more elegant and eloquent when you know more about the grammar and builtin functions).

That said, I also think that in many areas of computer science (especially in the theory; computability, complexity theory, machine models etc.) a structured and formal approach is vital.

Usually the practical programming skills are much more important while looking for a job, but for a degree you need both.