Bullshit.

The web is full of crap. To really learn you need to learn how to learn. Education still matters. Otherwise you’re just a gpt4 prompt monkey.

I’ve found many times in my life where the internet doesn’t know anything about what I’m trying to figure out. Your “just google It” recommendation is destructive.

You are a GPT-4 prompt monkey. Your experience is your prompt data. The more diverse it is, the better off you are.

Now, college / uni plays an important role here. It helps you learn how to learn stuff. If you're already good at learning things (and I mean really, really good), you can skip it. Otherwise, you should at least give it a try. Of course, try to get into a good one.

College teaches you how to memorize stuff and regurgitate it in exams. For practical / understanding-based coursework, it may teach you how to learn stuff, but for the smart students it instead teaches them how to craft an answer to fit a mark scheme. Are those useful skills? Probably. Do you need to spend tens of thousands for to learn them? Probably not.

College doesn't teach you how to learn. There's no course on memory or forgetting curves that is mandatory. Nobody taught me flashcard software.

I only got a bit about skimming and note taking from my high school teachers

Then buy a book or read a paper. It is staggering how many college courses just go through textbooks. I find people with this perspective are often bad at googling and/or aren't reading books/papers.

The problem with knowledge on the Web is that it's mixed in with a lot of noise, and, frankly, there's just too much of it clamouring for your attention.

So, sure, you can Google the hell out of CSS, and clearly that's good enough to build Web pages.

But equally there are a gazillion posts about everything, and no considered, coherent, path through it all.

A university maps a well-trodden, and hopefully well considered path through the knowledge. It leads you to places unknown, and sparks interest (and understanding) beyond just writing code.

For example you might randomly hear about P versus NP, or NP Complete, and decide to follow up on the web about that. Chances are though this might be the first time you've come across this. But I'm pretty sure it'll come up at college.

A degree course guides you through the knowledge, taking you places you didn't know existed. Over the long run this foundation makes it a lot easier to grow and do more than just "write code."

If you have the opportunity I recommend taking the time to do some formal study.

The benefit of formal education (beside easier visa, easier access to the hiring pipelines and meeting new like-minded people) are the tests.

I was struck so many times thinking I understood something (either through lectures or self-learning) to be proved wrong by the exams or talking to other people who studied the same.

It's no wonder that TAOCP is mostly about exercises. But, the algorithms are easy to self-test for understanding and knowledge. The other subjects -- not so much. Formal education helps here.