Its my impression that the people that want to *work* at learning *do*. It doesn't matter if they do it on their own, or if they do it through a college. These people are the "bright" ones. Not the ones that said, "Hey, there is a lot of money in computers, I'll get a computer degree..." instead they are the people that figure that they have a fun toy on their hands and want to learn all they can about how to play with it.

I love to see talks about design methodology and object "patterns" here... as well as the occasional database design. I think that its the highest level of playing that I do, and the most fun.

I've known people that master's degrees that could think their way around anything I could do... I've also know degreed people that weren't sure what I was talking about when I told them about relational databases.

>>What's interesting is this, and I'll probably get bashed for it, (and I don't claim to be completely non-biased) but by in large it's people WITHOUT degrees, who have done it own their own that I've found to be the best programmers, the best workers, and have the best feel for 'real world business problems'. Maybe it's just that of all the programmers I've ever met that were absolutly awful, not-a-clue, couldn't stick their floppy disk in their ear with both hands .... they all had degrees!
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>Sometimes you could have this impression.. I've seen cases where people with degrees had a kind a additude of "i'm a better programmer because i've got a degree". Of course this stinks. But on the other hand when I look to myself I'm convinced I wouldn't be the programmer I am now without the education. I've spend a whole lot of time to construct my own framework based on theories i've learned from the education. Much of my knowledge of Information Systems comes from the theory I could only have learned with the education of a degree.