[gringofyx]

I know I'm going to get some backlash for this comment so hold on to your hats. By going for a degree you're going to the route most often travelled by most developers, you'll spend three or four years trampling over territory frequently covered and thoroughly documented, you may be required to specific materials and use specific languages. Three to four years is a long time and during that time many things may have happenned in the IT industry, you may also find that your enthusiasm might have dwindled somewhat. And then you'll be faced with the biggest dilemma...

How do I get a job?

Sure, having a degree might add some weight to your CV/Resume but it will not have the same weight as three to four years of experience in a skillset that is modern and relevant.

The problem with the approach of avoiding the degree route is what some might see as a lack of depth/insight into computer science. And that really all depends on what career you want. If you want to build mobile Apps and Websites then you probably don't need the in depth computer science knowledge. On the flipside, if you want to get into games programming or device driver programming or programming of computationally intensive tasks then you need to know that computer science stuff.

People here might say that the computer science you'll learn from a degree is invaluable, but honestly it's mostly boring junk that most people sat in an lecture hall of three-hundred people will struggle to get through because of the tediosity of it's presentation. In educational institutes you (the student) are expected to go out and seek the answers to the lecturers questions - makes sense right? But you're doing the work there, and most of the time students don't know why they need to know what's been asked of them.

A few final points: most of the self-taught programmers I've known have been head-and-shoulders above their CS counterparts. They have had an insatiable appetite to learn and most have learned from a young age.

I started programming at a very young age, and actually wanted to study Physics at University because I was slightly tired of computer programming by that age... little did I know I was going to make a career out of it.