The value of a degree for young self-taught developers: my personal experience

Introduction: who am I?

I don’t want to bore you too much with a long introduction, but I think it’s important to introduce my somewhat unconventional situation. I’m a self-taught web developer who has been working in the industry for a few years now. I started by freelancing with a small student web agency. Later on, I switched to a big local web agency where I worked on a ton of projects. Now, I work at a large tech company that develops software for government agencies.

Apart from my work, I’m an avid rugby player. I have played for the Dutch U18 & U20 national teams, and at one of the biggest clubs in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, after multiple concussions, I felt forced to temporarily stop playing.

Why did I decide to study Computer Science & Engineering, even when I already had a job?

Being a web developer is great. I love the work I do, and I’m passionate about it. However, working on the same type of projects got a bit boring. Since I hadn’t been working that long, I felt like I was gonna get stuck in a rut if I didn’t do something about it. I missed the challenge of learning & adapating to new things. Apart from my own feelings, I also got a few parents who were pushing me to get a degree.

The incredible improvement in my capacities

I haven’t even been studying for a year now, but I’ve already noticed a huge improvement in my capacities & abilities. At my day job, I have noticed that tasks that would have taken a considerable amount of time & mental effort before got trivial. For example, I always had to put in considerable effort to design semi-complex Typescript types. Now, after following a course about reasoning & logic, I can do it without breaking a sweat. Moreover, I had to design a function to manipulate the generated HTML from a content management system. Due to constraints, I had to manipulate the HTML/DOM directly instead of adapting the generation process within the CMS itself. I opted for a simpler solution later on, but at first I adapted the DOM tree parser of a popular library to modify the HTML. This would have been a daunting task before, but now it was kinda easy and fun.

I would have never guessed that even a few months of studying would have such a big impact on my day-to-day work. The impact of studying multiple years must be enormous and pretty much unimaginable.