Not disrespectful at all. I agree with the sibling comments, I think what allows someone to become a great software developer, to have great intuition, and to understand systems and abstractions on a really deep level is their curiosity, hunger for knowledge, and a lot of experience.

There are many college educated software developers who have that sort of drive (or passion, if you will) and there are just as many who don't, it's not something college can teach you, and the same is true for self-taught developers.

At the end of the day "self-taught" is also a spectrum that ranges from people who created their first "hello world" React app 2 months ago to people who have been involved in systems programming since they were 10 years old, and have a wealth of knowledge in multiple related fields like web development, systems administration, and networking. That's why I think it's silly to generalize like that.

Software development is extremely broad so depending on the discipline self-taught developers might not be missing anything essential, or they might have to learn algorithms, discrete mathematics, linear algebra, or calculus on their own. I learned all of that in college but I'd probably have to learn most of it again if I really needed it.