I think this depends on what you are looking for in your career. If you want to always have to keep pace with the latest certifications, and let the technology drive you, then maybe certifications are fine. If, however you want to learn things that are LASTING, and maybe even drive some of the technology, get a Computer Science degree. One of the greatest texts in CS is still Dr. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, and that is many years old. But you learn enough computing theory in a computer science education that you will be able to tackle whatever problems come your way through reasoning. The important stuff to learn doesn't change every 5 years.
You can totally tell people who didn't go to college from people who did go to college in this industry; the people who never went always think they know everything, whereas the people who went know enough to know that they don't know everything. It's really hard to interact and work with non-college-going-types because they think that the first thing that pops into their head is the right way to do things. I had to quit a job because it was too hard to work with those people. An education matters if you want to do real software engineering.
But emacs IS an operating system. It just runs at another layer than the traditional OS. It's at version 20 and is very stable for an OS. I don't think this was a tongue in cheek comment at all.
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I think this depends on what you are looking for in your career. If you want to always have to keep pace with the latest certifications, and let the technology drive you, then maybe certifications are fine. If, however you want to learn things that are LASTING, and maybe even drive some of the technology, get a Computer Science degree. One of the greatest texts in CS is still Dr. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, and that is many years old. But you learn enough computing theory in a computer science education that you will be able to tackle whatever problems come your way through reasoning. The important stuff to learn doesn't change every 5 years. You can totally tell people who didn't go to college from people who did go to college in this industry; the people who never went always think they know everything, whereas the people who went know enough to know that they don't know everything. It's really hard to interact and work with non-college-going-types because they think that the first thing that pops into their head is the right way to do things. I had to quit a job because it was too hard to work with those people. An education matters if you want to do real software engineering.
But emacs IS an operating system. It just runs at another layer than the traditional OS. It's at version 20 and is very stable for an OS. I don't think this was a tongue in cheek comment at all.