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Comment by hanniabu | Hacker News Reader

I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and decided to quit my job to learn programming at home. Took me a year to get to the point where I'm comfortable and know my way around.

However, just because I taught myself doesn't mean that it was free. I had a year of lost wages which is about 65K, so all in all it costed about the same amount for me.

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He had 4 years of lost wages + $65k in debt. When you're in college, you don't work. So, again, he's in much worse situation than someone who learns programming at home in 1 year.

I went to college for 4 years as well, so again, you can say we were in the same boat: 4 years of lost wages + $65k in debt for him, 4 years of lost wages + $65k in lost wages for me

The difference is that you lost that money, but you don't owe it to anyone. Nobody can come over and take your stuff because you owe them that money.

And then there's the matter of a debt being an amount agreed upon by all stakeholders, whereas your "lost wages" are just a number you calculate in an arbitrary manner, which may or may not reflect reality. Maybe you did lose $65k by not working. Maybe if you hadn't gone to college you'd have been hit by a car and you'd have lost far more than that. Maybe you'd be unemployed. Who's to say?

Money is not money unless it's in your pocket (or bank account) or in an IOU.

Except he didn't have an engineering degree, so its not clear he'd have had any job at all, much less a well-paying one.

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