You can't say you have a degree in computer science, but you can certainly learn and practice the theory and concepts just as well as anyone else. And to that end: I see lots of good material!
alienation from any community. from peers, from elders, from others that are passionate about sharing knowledge via human-to-human transmission. and no - automated learning is not a computer-mediated transmission in the very sense that reading 12 books by 12 authors does not mean you had 12 teachers.
Who cares? The academic community is often alienating everybody who is not in academia, degree or not. And where it isn't, it doesn't care if you have a degree or not.
The hard truth is that there isn't much "science" in most computer "science" jobs. The world needs brick layers too. Nothing wrong with that as such, but confusing computer scientists with programming workers is one of the root causes for the software mess these days.
self-educated know-it-alls are much more responsible for the appalling level of alienation of people in IT in general. since so many people are self-taught they are eventually not learned into exchanging knowledge with other humans.
I have multiple degrees in history yet I’m completely detached from the academic community because I don’t do research and don’t publish anything. So if I follow your logic it means I (and many thousands like me) have no degree at all?
