[Haskell-cafe] Fwd: education or experience?

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 12/10/2012 01:20 AM, Eli Frey wrote:
> 
> Jerzy makes a good point that you might not be the best judge of what you
> should learn.

Not only that: you have *no reliable way of knowing* what you might be
missing.

Any half-decent CS education gives you a very broad grounding in the
field so that you'll know where to look and what you need to read up on
when you find yourself stuck trying to tackle some problem. Without the
grounding there's a real risk that you might end up fighting windmills
or reinventing solutions that were already known in the 1970s.

Note: I am not saying that *formal* education is necessarily the only
way to get such a grounding, but it *is* a very reliable one assuming
that, a) you find a half-decent university, and b) it suits your
temprament, and c) you put in the requisite effort to learn about things
that may not be of immediate interest.

Regards,