Thanks for all the responses. Most of the responses that support going to college seem to argue based on the value of a degree, instead of the education and skills.

It seems that most of us agree that the education, skills, and networking can be found elsewhere. But there's also a decent consensus on the value of a degree.

nirvana, thanks for your input. I'll definitely consider your viewpoints and whether the piece of paper is worth it.

Thanks for the response. I'm a computer science student, so I don't have a chance to read actual program code for classes/etc.

Great, thanks for the response.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I've done some programming in Python and am currently learning Ruby.

One of the differences I see is Python's philosophy of having one, correct way to do things, while Ruby supports having multiple ways. This difference in philosophy seems to be clear in the language design. Python usually has one or two accepted ways to do basic tasks, while Ruby has more.

It's a little frustrating because in Ruby, I have to remember different syntax and constructs for doing the same basic thing. I'd much rather just have to remember one way, and expect other people's code to use that one way (ie, Python is more readable).

Python also seems to have a larger community and more well-developed/useful libraries and tools. I don't think NumPy and SciPy have equivalents in Ruby.

Also, even though Ruby says it advocates the principle of least surprise, I'm often surprised by Ruby, and much less so by Python.

That's interesting. What exactly did you spend money on when you were in the high-paying jobs?

Yeah, I might try. I'm currently in college, though thinking about just taking a leave of absence.

There seem to be a good number of people who are happy working low pay jobs. I can't help but think that there's an unfair social stigma against it.

When you transcend being concerned with what other people think - that's when you truly become free.

Take the leave of absence and enjoy a semester of doing something different. Then with that experience under your belt, you will make better decisions for your future.

Just a suggestion. Have you thought about freelancing? I've seen threads here where freelancers seem to be able to make a decent amount, provided they know the right technology and spend some time carving out a niche / getting to know clients. Maybe you can try searching for those threads and see what technologies are in demand?

Freelancing could be something you try to get into while looking for a job. And it would also be a way to build your resume.

That's maybe a route I could take. I guess I always felt to freelance you had to be really good at selling yourself though, that there was a lot of competition, and I'm probably not the greatest at that.

I do have some pretty marketable skills: a fair amount of experience in PHP, Rails, Javascript, SQL, HTML / CSS.

I'd have no idea how to go about getting the first few clients though.

Thanks for the responses. Yeah, I was thinking that it was very important to actually learn the "computer science" part and not just the programming part.