There's a huge difference in degree between the ability to keep up to date in CS once you have a foundation and building that foundation from scratch.

I worked for years as a programmer before going back for a degree, and I've hired and worked with many people with and without the degrees.

I've yet to run into someone who self studied their way through the equivalent of a CS degree. I'm sure they exist, but they're pretty damn rare.

I've bumped into quite a few in the bay area, sometimes they're even people building the infrastructure for huge companies like Twitch or people who have made significant contributions that have advanced the field in one way or another.

As I said. They exist. You're going to run into many people of extraordinary ability living in the world's tech hub. But again, the vast majority of people don't have the discipline to self study their way through an entire CS curriculum.

The whole “constantly changing” thing is not true when it comes to computer science theory.

What you are talking about is essentially programming as a trade. That’s not what a CS degree or any degree is for, really.

The best programmers have a deep understanding of how computer software works.

The dev tools are used in those degrees just as tools to achieve something else. I remember taking a compiler course (as in, we got to write optimising compilers as an assignment) with people who didn't have a good grasp on how to really use those tools in detail. You were just expected to pick it up on the way. It was treated as a basic skill.

> The best programmers have a deep understanding of how computer software works.

That's a value judgement that is not reflected in the market, fwiw.

> The problem is CS is constantly changing and you need to be routinely upgrading your skills as time progresses to stay competitive in the marketplace.

CS moves slowly, tooling moves fast.

The fundamentals of CS are pretty static and haven't changed for decades. Tooling and ecosystems move fast but they are all based on the same principles and usually written by someone who studied them. You can usually tell who has a CS degree, for instance by how fast someone picks up a library. e.g "oh, so this is just an implementation of a state machine but with x".

My 300 and 400 level coursework has helped me repeatedly throughout my career, 14 years later. The two themes that keep coming back: What is a computer, and what is a network? And: massive exposure to relevant languages, data structures, algorithms, and math I would not have bothered to study independently.