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> Attentive CS graduates have a structured pool of information to draw from

Yes, but a self-taught Developer also has their own pool of information to draw from. That could be prior experience, but it can also overlap with the CS graduates' pool of information.

You don't need to take a DSA class to learn DSA. There is a wealth of information out there for self-taught developers to learn these kinds of things. From textbooks to YouTube videos, it is all readily available for anyone.

Self-taught does not mean you need to invent everything from first principles.

> Self-taught does not mean you need to invent everything from first principles.

It does imply lack of access to formal resources, though. Learning from a textbook or an educationally-minded Youtube channel is no more self-taught than sitting through a lecture in college.

It is ultimately a distinction without a difference. Historically, when information was siloed, there was a difference. Self-taught meant something when you couldn't look something up on a whim. But those days are long behind us.

Well... Self-taught means that the person learned by their own initiative, "without formal instruction or training".

Going to the library or buying and reading books is not formal instruction, and neither is watching Videos. There is no one to guide, help, or check on progress.

I could watch the entire MIT Intro to Algorithms Course on YouTube and still be self-taught, because watching that does not make me an MIT Student and it does not make Dr. Jason Ku my instructor.

> Do your colleagues actually do this? I'm curious about the mechanics- they just say "Sorry, that can't be done" and everyone moves on?

Yes, but management at every level also anticipates it up front before the typical developer or developer team has the chance to get there.

Pretty myopic viewpoint. You wasted an afternoon figuring out graph-traversal & loop detection from first principles -- using and stretching your mental abilities -- rather than being spoonfed it? That's absurd. Utterly absurd.

I get no satisfaction from rediscovering CS concepts & algorithms first put to paper by the field's pioneers between 1940-1970s, though it sounds like you do.

Some wood (or metal) workers take pride in making their own tools, and others, who are like me, buy off the shelf tools and use them to make actual things that people buy.

I'm insulted, but I won't drag this out.

>if had I taken DS&A class, it'd have taken me all of 2 seconds to choose between BFS and DFS

"Hey ChatGPT, explain me how BFS and DFS work, their differences, pros and cons, and which one fits my use case better."

A bit more than 2 seconds, but not an afternoon.

The real issue is not making the choice itself but rather bringing the knowledge about what the decision space is in the first place. (But sometimes the "knowledge" is also a limiting form of preconception)

I believe GP's implicit point was that you also need to know even to ask the right question.

Granted, an autodidact programmer might have encountered the concepts, but a CS graduate must have.

In my case, I was an autodidact well before I went in for Electronics Engineering. Because of personal interest, I put in a lot of time into these things, and did get to know them, but didn't really hear once about them in EE.

I guess if one engages long and deeply enough, they'll get to a high enough level - they'll acquire "sufficient expertise", per PG's turn of phrase. Conversely, no amount of CS courses will get one any wiser if they don't pay attention.

Everything always depends.