Would it be acceptable to do a part-time (i.e. community) college or take college classes with an internship? If not, I strongly recommend look at a college with co-op and internship program.
I agree that the computer science knowledge, even some of the deeply theoretical stuff, is heavily underrated. Classes like OS, networks, programming languages and compilers, and computation theory have taught me stuff I use in actual software development. Plus, learning how to look up stuff and understand research papers and take measurements and form experiments (you will need to read heavy documentation and measure things in industry).
Without knowing the fundamentals of CS like data structures you may miss out some concepts and end up doing things inefficiently (in both development effort and inefficient programs). Webdev alone won’t get you that knowledge.
As for the “college experience” personally I disagree. I’m of the camp (as an American) that it’s mostly a glorified American thing. As long as you have some friends, who you can find in college or industry or your local town (if you don’t move), you are set, and you’re not missing much (as having some friends and hanging out basically is the college experience).
But also, as someone who went through college I think it greatly helps to have experience in industry. Because while you miss out on purely industry, you also miss out on purely academia (cue: academics who are wildly out-of-touch, papers on deep theoretical concepts I doubt will have any real-world use). It also really helps with finances (read: not going into college debt) and "getting your foot in the game" and making connections early is extremely useful as it will let you graduate with experience on your resume and skip entry-level jobs. I think that the best solution is both, hence join an internship-focused college or take college classes and maybe lab work while doing an internship
I agree that the computer science knowledge, even some of the deeply theoretical stuff, is heavily underrated. Classes like OS, networks, programming languages and compilers, and computation theory have taught me stuff I use in actual software development. Plus, learning how to look up stuff and understand research papers and take measurements and form experiments (you will need to read heavy documentation and measure things in industry).
Without knowing the fundamentals of CS like data structures you may miss out some concepts and end up doing things inefficiently (in both development effort and inefficient programs). Webdev alone won’t get you that knowledge.
As for the “college experience” personally I disagree. I’m of the camp (as an American) that it’s mostly a glorified American thing. As long as you have some friends, who you can find in college or industry or your local town (if you don’t move), you are set, and you’re not missing much (as having some friends and hanging out basically is the college experience).
But also, as someone who went through college I think it greatly helps to have experience in industry. Because while you miss out on purely industry, you also miss out on purely academia (cue: academics who are wildly out-of-touch, papers on deep theoretical concepts I doubt will have any real-world use). It also really helps with finances (read: not going into college debt) and "getting your foot in the game" and making connections early is extremely useful as it will let you graduate with experience on your resume and skip entry-level jobs. I think that the best solution is both, hence join an internship-focused college or take college classes and maybe lab work while doing an internship