Show HN: I interviewed the maker of the privacy-first Google Analytics rival

When I saw a title, I thought that was a story of a learn-js-in-10-minutes, haha.

I have a degree in CS, but the more I read, the more I could relate. I believe the good formal education is very valuable for a software developer, but it's true that most things I learned were from internet and self-education on examples.

The degree is a great thing to have, but when you're native speaker in Javascript, it's even better.

Still, these things are not replaceable: I believe both are important.

Now, I'd like to be a party-breaker for a minute and counter-argument the idea that the degree is redundant in place of a developer experience: it gives you structure and a framework for a problem-solving. I am able to mock-up and prototype quickly, and to build systems because I have received formal 6-year education in maths, physics and CS. I haven't had a Javascript classes. I learned it on examples, starting from HTML forms in 2007. But the things I'm able to do now in React would be impossible without the background in GTR, quantum physics and calculus.

Yes, you would be a great developer without a degree. But you would be even greater one with it.

Always been interested in the technical background of developers who make things I use, like Simple Analytics in this case. So it was fun to talk to Adriaan about how he learned to code without a degree.