Aside: What is really meant by "self-taught programmer" anyway? I have managed and worked with people who came out of university and couldn't program their way out of a paper bag.
This one always makes me raise an eyebrow too. My experience at university was that students who didn't teach themselves anything didn't really succeed in class either.
I interviewed dozens upon dozens of candidates who couldn't describe to me the underlying data structure for a hash table, all with degrees from reputable schools. This was at Amazon of all places, where they did a decent job of filtering before they even got to me.
Don't even get me started on post-grad degrees. Those that have only PhD's or Masters in CS have been especially bad in my experience.
Passing a course, even doing well, is a very different thing than actually internalizing the material.
Not in my experience, those have patience to study a phd or a masters are those who are really passionate about the subject. Those who move on to them tend to be the hardcore kids who started programming from 13 years old.
They may not be good in work environment doing some random UI work, it would turn their brains to mash.
> Those that have only PhD's or Masters in CS have been especially had in my experience.
When all you have is a PhD, everything looks like a nail.
Seconding your view on reality. I've only met one programmer with a masters / doctorate that knew what he was doing. The rest -- close to a dozen of 'em -- spent all their time trying to shoe-horn any project they were working on into their thesis.
This one always makes me raise an eyebrow too. My experience at university was that students who didn't teach themselves anything didn't really succeed in class either.