>Folks can learn almost anything using the resources of the internet.

This is correct, but it isn't true. I can't tell you how many people I know stuck in the tarpit of "learning to code via the internet", who are being bombarded with flash-in-the-pan.js tutorials and coding tutor websites that don't really lead anywhere.

I think we as software developers look back on learning to code, and only remember the epiphanies, forgetting how infrequent those epiphanies actually were, and what a different climate things were even 10 years ago.

Quite frankly, if a person has any sort of formal education in their background such as college or even taking coding classes in high school, they are then entirely unqualified to offer such an opinion. It may be easy to learn new languages online due to having learned the foundations, but unless you can say you learned all the foundations online, this type of comment isnt helpful. As many others have mentioned learning is a science and it takes a lot of work to structure learning in a digestible manner.

I'm speaking from this perspective, I dropped out of school and barely made it to my CS classes. I learned on the job through internships and resources online.

You can test the vets on the knowledge and grant them special certifications that can single out the ones who ha ve tested out of the curriculum.

I teach in a coding school and while there are tons of good contents out there they would hit a brick wall quite soon. We mentor them, we are there 8 hours a day + all day on slack to answer their questions. We run cognitive apprenticeship sessions (live coding) twice a week. We require them to demo what they've learned each Friday and many more nuances that simply browsing MDN won't give you.

In short, good coding schools are a shortcut to being a junior developer. They will learn how to learn to code.

I would contend that books don't give you the opportunity of practicing the intricacies of interacting with your peers.

Books also don't provide credentials. Having knowledge about a topic isn't usually sufficient to get to the interview stage.

"code schools" don't provide credentials either. This isn't talking about providing college education to veterans, that is already covered by the GI bill. This is about "coding bootcamp" and "make an iPhone app in two weeks" sort of school. And that doesn't play any better in an interview than self-learning.

Good code schools have existing relationships with recruiters and employers that will get students interviews.

You could apply the same logic to university.