[freshtake]

The reactive ingredient is passion, not the learning modality. Low motivation is really limiting, no matter how you like to learn. Of course, this topic is hard to discuss in a quantitative way because the number of engineers you come across in your career is a minuscule fraction of the total. Hard to draw broad conclusions like this, but here are a few:

- Formal education is great for foundational concepts (math, hardware, operating systems, compilers, graphics, etc.). Self-taught approaches tend to be goal oriented (I'm learning X because I want to do Y), which can overlook fundamentals that are important. When you don't know what you don't know, having someone to efficiently guide you can save a ton of time, and for some topics, that mentor is a great textbook or teacher.

- Most engineers I know would consider themselves a mixture of formal and informal/self-taught. Again, if you have passion for engineering then you probably like to learn and build, which means you're complementing any formal training with your own tinkering.

I've met and worked closely with amazing engineers and have never found their education style a distinguishing factor. Their passion however, was obvious.

Also, the examples given in the post (Linus, Margaret) were incredibly academic :-)

[louthy]

> The reactive ingredient is passion, not the learning modality.

As a self-taught programmer I agree with this. I started teaching myself on 8 bit computers in the mid-80s and didn't go to university. By the time I got my first full-time programming job, at the age of 19, I'd already been programming for 9 years. By the time most people are leaving university I was already nearly 15 years into my programming journey. It's hard to ignore that kind of passion and drive.

I'm now four decades in and love it in the same way I did at the start. I'm a maker, I like making. I keep reading the papers and am constantly interested in where this thing is going ... and I write a lot of code!

However, I don't like the premise that self-taught engineers lack foundational concepts just because they didn't go the academic route. I think many of us find the academic aspects just as interesting -- it really depends on the field you're in I think. For sure, we don't normally have the time to do a deep dive of something, but by the time you're decades in you've probably got just as many if not more 'foundational chops' than someone who spent a few years at school.

Anecdotally, as someone who's hired and fired plenty over the years, I think there is something to the Self-Taught Engineers Outperform theory. But I think it's purely that they spend much more time doing. They do more in work and they do more in their free time. The passion brute-forces the learning.

[danaris]

I think that what most people mean is that with a self-taught engineer, you have no way of knowing whether they have the foundations. It's going to be much more common with self-taught engineers than with formally-educated ones to have areas of surpassing brilliance, and areas where they don't know their arse from their elbow, and no easy way to predict what those will be until you get to know the specific engineer.

With formally-educated software engineers, so long as the school they got their degree at is a reputable one with a decent program, you can be reasonably confident that they'll have a solid foundation, and if you're familiar with the institution you may even know what their strengths and weaknesses are likely to be.

[bevr1337]

> When you don't know what you don't know, having someone to efficiently guide you can save a ton of time, and for some topics, that mentor is a great textbook or teacher.

A bit of a self insert, but I think you described the reality so well that I wanted to offer my own anecdote.

I'm somewhere between formally educated and self-taught. I did not complete higher level undergrad maths like discrete or linear. Because of this, my vocabulary is lacking. I don't even know what to google, even if I could teach myself!

Some subjects really benefit from instruction and direction. It's actually hard to find a math tutor to proof your vector math program in your late 30s. My colleagues either forgot or are using that energy elsewhere.

[asgraham]

> It's actually hard to find a math tutor to proof your vector math program in your late 30s.

They exist, if you know where to look and are willing to pay (source: me, or generally and probably more affordably wyzant.com)

[harulf]

As another commenter proposed, try getting a course book and going through it at your own pace. With your newfound determination and interest it wouldn't surprise me if you stuck with it this time. Alternatively, if you prefer putting vector math into immediate practice, fields like graphics and game dev use it a LOT.

[edwardbernays]

Have you considered trying to acquire the language by reading a textbook alongside a lecture series?

[zahlman]

> The reactive ingredient is passion, not the learning modality.

Sure, but passion also drives self-teaching. It's less necessary in a classroom setting because there's always someone trying to keep you on track.

> Self-taught approaches tend to be goal oriented (I'm learning X because I want to do Y), which can overlook fundamentals that are important.

For some, understanding a system can be a goal in itself.

[stronglikedan]

> mixture of formal and informal/self-taught

That's me. Took plenty of college classes, but never tested well, so never got a degree. I learned most everything on my own, but those classes were a foundation for what I taught myself, and I couldn't have done it without them (as quickly).

[nativeit]

This is a good point. I think the structured curricula can be the only way to learn many technical topics, even if you aren’t being formally taught. I also found my time at university to be invaluable for the equipment, facilities, and resources that were made available to me for learning that I could never have provided to myself.

[positron26]

Yeah, being lead to some water does not create dependence on being lead to all water.

If there is a consistent argument, it's that self-taught people have all demonstrated leading themselves to some water.