Hmmm... Some hackers (namely myself) try to keep professional, while avoiding the costly indirect college route. There are other hackers besides myself who put emphasis on learning UML, CORBA, Object Oriented Design, as well as low level algorithms like Balanced Binary Trees, Linked Listed, etc.
Just because we're hackers doesn't mean we're stupid, lazy, unprofessional, or any other negative implication your previous message stated.
But you have to settle for lower paying, less glamourous jobs until you build up enough experience. Four years of real work experience is MUCH more valuable than a chunk of paper. Too many graduates really don't care about what they're doing. They just want the high paying job at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, if you ever become self employed (which is the goal of many programmers), the degree is somewhat irrelevant all of a sudden.
You're correct about the creative elements of programming, and how work programming really isn't as passionate as free time programming. At the same time, I think you're missing a piece of the puzzle. If no one cares about user interface and ease of use, why develop GTK, GNOME, KDE, the hoards of window managers, etc. It's obviously a sore spot in the OSS community that is trying to be addressed with these many GUI elements.
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Hmmm... Some hackers (namely myself) try to keep professional, while avoiding the costly indirect college route. There are other hackers besides myself who put emphasis on learning UML, CORBA, Object Oriented Design, as well as low level algorithms like Balanced Binary Trees, Linked Listed, etc.
Just because we're hackers doesn't mean we're stupid, lazy, unprofessional, or any other negative implication your previous message stated.
But you have to settle for lower paying, less glamourous jobs until you build up enough experience. Four years of real work experience is MUCH more valuable than a chunk of paper. Too many graduates really don't care about what they're doing. They just want the high paying job at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, if you ever become self employed (which is the goal of many programmers), the degree is somewhat irrelevant all of a sudden.
You're correct about the creative elements of programming, and how work programming really isn't as passionate as free time programming. At the same time, I think you're missing a piece of the puzzle. If no one cares about user interface and ease of use, why develop GTK, GNOME, KDE, the hoards of window managers, etc. It's obviously a sore spot in the OSS community that is trying to be addressed with these many GUI elements.