Having been on both sides of the fence I can definitely speak to autodidacticism as having yielded some of the most durable and rewarding lessons of my lifetime spent programming, if only because I was really internally motivated to try my hand at game modding, or writing fun toy websites or mobile apps, or even learning Haskell. There are indeed some practical realities you will learn how to overcome that simply are not (and should not) be covered in a usual computer science curriculum (e.g. git, vim, basic shell fluency, etc.).
At the same time I feel that the self-taught dev or bootcamper from the 2010s is really a far cry from the geek culture of yesteryear. As opposed to misfits obsessed with computers, we now have grifters appropriating geek culture to make a buck off the industry. These people lack internal motivation; they are driven only by the external motivation of monetary reward. Consequently it's unlikely that they would delve into more of the esoterica of computing that, while interesting and fascinating to learn about, doesn't yield immediate monetary benefit.
In concrete terms what this amounts to is people "self-identifying" as "senior software engineers" who have never heard of the term `xor` in their life, and don't even understand what a truth table is when it's drawn out for them.
Even still, those who are highly internally motivated are still likely to have blindspots in their knowledge or not know that a field of study useful to them even exists, which is why having a more systematic and thorough review of the field's basics is useful.
Is knowledge of basic boolean logic, "advanced and impractical theoretical computer science," or merely, "table stakes?"
When anybody can identify as anything you eliminate the possibility of drawing meaningful distinctions and assessing qualifications.
At the same time I feel that the self-taught dev or bootcamper from the 2010s is really a far cry from the geek culture of yesteryear. As opposed to misfits obsessed with computers, we now have grifters appropriating geek culture to make a buck off the industry. These people lack internal motivation; they are driven only by the external motivation of monetary reward. Consequently it's unlikely that they would delve into more of the esoterica of computing that, while interesting and fascinating to learn about, doesn't yield immediate monetary benefit.
In concrete terms what this amounts to is people "self-identifying" as "senior software engineers" who have never heard of the term `xor` in their life, and don't even understand what a truth table is when it's drawn out for them.
Even still, those who are highly internally motivated are still likely to have blindspots in their knowledge or not know that a field of study useful to them even exists, which is why having a more systematic and thorough review of the field's basics is useful.
Is knowledge of basic boolean logic, "advanced and impractical theoretical computer science," or merely, "table stakes?"
When anybody can identify as anything you eliminate the possibility of drawing meaningful distinctions and assessing qualifications.