Nope, to be senior you have to be doing it as a job for a few years. Programming alone is several league different from working with a team. And lastly to be good at something you have to actively practice (build stuff), not just read, read, read whatever ressources you use.
Agreed. You also need real work experience in fixing your own (and other peoples') broken software and in supporting customers through the entire software lifecycle. It's like reading about firefighters versus actually putting out flames.
I'm an accountant. Have been programming for years, paid college by hacking games and selling bots. Covid19 quarantine gave me the time to dive back in and actually relearning programming correctly, and rekindled my passion for it.
It's actually harder to find a remote job because if I work full time for someone else I will not settle for 500 and probably will not accept anything paying less that my job now.
It is not, it depends on what you do, what problem you want to solve and so on. You noticed it yourself, for example for game dev windows is just plain better. These OS fights on which one is better are just nonsense.
As an European, this question doesn't even deserved to be asked, of course it should. Not just higher education, but at all level. More educated population is always better for any country, so education should be accessible for anyone and not hidden behind paywalls. Education and Healthcare should be where most of the tax money goes.
I love the "motivated ground-up" approach. Always mystified by the economics of educational/textbook publishing, though. I suppose for required coursework it's not unreasonable and it really looks like an exhaustive tome and educational resource. Just kind of prohibitively high $ for non-formal student. (New price is like $135, used price inexplicably over $1000)
