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[SalmonGod]

Anybody can do art, but doing it well is tough tough tough.  Especially if you go to a fine arts school.  It consumes your life.  My wife tried to get a fine arts degree and at one of her panel reviews they almost directly told her "You don't have enough time in your life to do what we're going to require of you.  Get out.  Now."  She doesn't even work.  She just stays home with the kids.

I imagine the same rules apply for learning programming as with anything else, though, including art.  Immerse yourself in what you want to learn.  Do something related regularly.  Stay on top of your personal development. 

The #1 thing that helps with this is to find a place you can hang out where programming is a part of the culture.  I ended up one of the best 3d artists in my college graduating class, and I did it by hanging out on forums related to the field.  I found a software that I really connected with (Zbrush), found the official forums for that software which happened to be a great place full of helpful people, and I spent lots of time browsing and interacting.  It got me familiar with things really quickly, and helped keep me motivated.  I ended up knowing more about this software than the head 3d professor of the school.

So I wouldn't worry about the standards of your education as I would about your personal habits and participation in a programming culture.  I honestly think we're at a point where a person can learn almost anything they want to without going to formal education to do so.

[Virex]

So I wouldn't worry about the standards of your education as I would about your personal habits and participation in a programming culture.  I honestly think we're at a point where a person can learn almost anything they want to without going to formal education to do so.

Unfortunately, that attitude seems really prevalent amongst amateur physics blogs. You seriously can't count the amount of people who have refuted quantum mechanics or relativity, invented a perpetuum mobile, solved the 3 body problem, proved P = nP or discovered the unifying theory...
On the topic at hand, it's all to easy to learn one paradigm, think you understand everything and never look beyond your current horizons. If you grok one language, try one that is completely out there compared to your current one (plenty of those around. Forth, Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, ML, D, Prolog, Smalltalk, Assembler, the list keeps going on and on). You'll also want a theoretical background on algorithms and data structures (to avoid writing an O(n!) function when you can do with O(n) to name an extreme example. Being able to prove your solution is going to work for any input is also useful).

[Max White]

Saying you don't need a formal education to program is like saying you don't need a formal education to design a bridge.

I haven't formally studied civic engineering, yet I know that a thinker piece of wood is stronger then a thinner piece, and I know you need nails to hold it together. I dare say that without a formal education I could build a little bridge over a small fish pond in my backyard, and with a coat of paint it would look very nice and hold my weight. That in no way entitles me to be able to design the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

So I guess as a small hobby, if you want to do something fun, then get some online lessons in something and hack away blindly at it until it works. If your planning on programming for a living, then for every bodies sake, your own and who ever has to work on the system after you, get some real education.

[SalmonGod]

So I wouldn't worry about the standards of your education as I would about your personal habits and participation in a programming culture.  I honestly think we're at a point where a person can learn almost anything they want to without going to formal education to do so.

Unfortunately, that attitude seems really prevalent amongst amateur physics blogs. You seriously can't count the amount of people who have refuted quantum mechanics or relativity, invented a perpetuum mobile, solved the 3 body problem, proved P = nP or discovered the unifying theory...

That's just... crazy... and seems to be a problem only halfway related to the issue of self-education.  It takes a special kind of ego to think that you can read up on stuff in your free time and produce holy grails or things long ago proven impossible.

Like I mentioned I got to know ZBrush better than my professor... which is true... but I still won't pretend he doesn't have a vastly greater general knowledge of the field in all its other facets.

And another thing, you can't get good at something just by hanging around other amateurs.  You need to find a place where you can interact with professionals.  There are great 3d forums out there where artists who do real AAA-level work for game and movie studios will start up threads for their personal work to showcase their processes, trade tips with each other, answer questions, make contacts, etc.  I'm sure the same kind of thing is out there for programming.

Basically, there are educational opportunities out there today beyond sitting through lectures.  I mean what do the majority of higher education courses consist of?  Buy textbook.  Listen to teacher read through textbook, then offer a bit of their own spin on it.  Recieve assignment related to textbook material, do assignment, get told you did it right or wrong.  If you have a good teacher, they'll give you some personal attention to help you improve on what you did.  This highly depends on the type of field, but that same teacher when they're not in class is probably spending a good chunk of time hanging out in circles related to the subject they teach, and more and more often these days those hang outs are probably open spaces like chat rooms or forums where they may not be as obligated to you but still accessible along with many of their peers.  I imagine this applies pretty well to programming.

And I'm not trying to say that higher education isn't valuable, just that, especially at a high school level, trying to push the quality of education you're receiving in the classroom wouldn't be as constructive as taking advantage of opportunities outside the classroom.  Heck, a lot of this advice is coming from that same 3d professor I mentioned earlier.  He would tell his students constantly that just doing the classwork assigned by him would not be enough, that we have to get out there involved in the 3d community observing and communicating with people in the field, doing tutorials, and lots of experimenting on our own.

[Neonivek]

Goodness were art classes not very helpful to me. (Elementary/Highschool)

I learned more outright copying someones style for how to do proper wings then I have in all of art class.

It doesn't help I guess that art class was rather focused on you just... I don't know... getting it.

[GlyphGryph]

I dunno, I disagree about the need for a formal education. It by no means guarantees the person involved will learn what they need to, and its certainly possible to learn everything you need without university.

It does take a certain mindset, though.

[GTM]

To chime in on the formal education system:

Most of what you learn in formal education CAN be learned on your own through books and/or life experience.  What formal education gets you is easy access to other smart people at varying stages of the same discipline - undergrads, grad students, professors, researchers, etc.  In a formal education setting, these people are more likely to answer your emails, read your papers, and share their ideas with you.  Through teamwork, you and they can advance their own knowledge and advance the sciences and arts at large.

The problem with a forum is that it's going to be filled with dilettantes and bullshitters, so it's hard to screen for idiots.  Like what you guys mentioned about the armchair "physics geniuses."

[alway]

The real thing I see getting out of my formal education in game development is more of how to do overarching structure and coding practices which will result in good code, rather than merely code which works. If you were to try developing a game engine w/o any formal education, you would likely end up groping around in the dark and restarting several times because you simply did not have access to the repository of experience available in a more formal setting. It's one thing to know what works and what, doesn't; it's another thing entirely to know what works well and what works poorly.

[blackmagechill]

Everytime I download the Netbeans for Ruby it says the installer is corrupted. Any fix for this?

[Eagleon]

Try downloading an older version/finding a mirror somewhere, or the new version into a new place on your harddrive. It's either you or them, and if neither works, it's your provider.