I often wonder - Hacker News seems like it might bias towards people who might be more self driven in their learning, does the mean student who is driven enough to go to class but doesn’t have the drive or understanding to learn on their own feel the same way? Especially in terms of bootstrapping a new skill. I’m very self-driven but could imagine college for like getting to that base professional level for something way out of my day-to-day. Particularly I think like I have a masters in counseling psychology, and I don’t think I could imagine that in my own without peers to discuss with and teachers to share professional experience.

At the same time - I’ve always been naturally good at tech. I could imagine when I was younger a CS degree being useful. Now, there are certainly gaps in my knowledge, but I’m well past the bootstrapping phase.