I totally agree. I’m another developer without a university degree. I work for a well respected company and we hire all levels of programmers. You don’t want all highly skilled senior devs, you need a mix of Jr and Intermediate level devs as well. Even our co-op students can contribute a lot and they know a lot less…

As a self taught software engineer working for one of the largest banks in the country, I disagree. I mean, not about your first statement - yes software is a lot more than just language semantics, but telling someone not to learn to code if they aren't going to spend years mastering the skills of a senior level…

"Code is not as complicated as you think, so go get started!"