Self taught or schooling?

Hey everyone,
I've got my bases down pretty good with html/css/flash etc. all self taught. I am looking however to turn my part time freelancing into my career. I really think it would be good to learn server scripting and database management. Would it be a good idea to seek some schooling for this? I feel as though I may get a more well rounded education, but I also dont want to waste my time. Have any of you taught yourself how to effectively utilize say php and mySQL to do what your clients require? thanks for any input.

100% self taught here, and I get extremely deep into PHP & MySQL, as well as Python, Actionscript, HTML/CSS, and Javascript.

It just takes motivation.

I'm totally against schools when it comes to this stuff, but I'm biased to not going to school and my own learning methods. But I feel that for someone to be good at what they do and be self taught, they've had more experience and knowledge than someone who went to school to learn it.

If you struggled through being self taught, it shows for one, that you care enough about what you're doing to seek it out and learn yourself. It also shows that you're extremely good at problem solving, and you know more about the languages as opposed to the syntaxes. Being self taught, you've struggled through bad code examples, trial after trial trying to get something to work, etc. You generally struggle more because there isn't someone telling you exactly what to do.

Now the other side of the coin is that I think most teachers are morons. Most teachers have gone to school all their lives just to teach this. They have little to no real world experience in the industry, and schools tend to be outdated. The web is an ever evolving life form, and even being a year behind is outdated.

But in all cases, there are exceptions. You may find a great school with real smart teachers that are completely up to date on everything.

I'm all for being self taught, obviously, and I feel that for this kind of job, if your employer is requiring a degree, he/she doesn't know what he/she is talking about. That paper means nothing if you have a portfolio. Like I said, I lean towards people without degrees for the reasons I mentioned. To me a person without a degree who has the same portfolio as someone with a degree is going to be a much better employee, but in the world today and dealing with the old people out there, unfortunately it doesn't always get looked at that way.

Amen Taco. I am self-taught as well 100% in several different languages. It seems like most of the developers I meet rather it be Flash / AS or .NET that went to school to learn they only "know what they know" and nothing else. If you ask one of those people to go outside their comfort zone they will most likely crash.

Thanks for the input. Looks like I'll be getting a couple new books. Its a good thing though I already have a decent portfolio started.

i am always very suspitious of any kind of course or lessons.

if you where charging me $30 an hour for say piano lessons, would you really want me to learn that fast?

personally i have to learn hands on by figuring it out my self and asking for help when stuck.

I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. I went to college for computer graphics, interactive multimedia at Purdue University. Nothing wrong with getting formal training in an advanced field, in an evironment with real-time, instand feedback for any question available.

However, college or no, most people are mostly self-taught without realizing it. I think I would claim that No one in the world knows the majority of his knowledge in his field from some professer saying "This is how you do this..." Professers and teachers lay groundwork, give tips, projects, and paths on how to get better. The rest is up to you.

With the exception of PhotoshopWorld. I've never learned more about anything from formal presentations in my life. Those guys are ridiculous awesome.

One big advantage of going the school route, is the certified programs they offer.

I think the whole point of these schools are depended on the person. Some people can get introduced to say, programming languages and software they were unaware of. Also they get their hands on software they cannot afford for their home PC's.

I started as a self-taught coder using GW-Basic hehe (remember that ;P)

But I wanted to learn how to create graphics and what not. So I went to a tech school to learn it. Partially because my family wanted the good old paper degree. But then when I started at the tech school, I found that the teachers were downloading tutorials on the net first off... second you would ask them questions a bit more advanced than what there teaching they wouldn't know. Now that can sound harsh but I was very optimistic in what this "tech" school advertised, you know top of the line teachers from the industry, blah blah... to find out that 1 out of the 30 teachers was from the industry... that teacher was a painter/artist... not in anyway technical. The others, I remember one teacher I saw him delivering newspapers one morning. The thing is I found out that some of these schools don't want to pay their teachers, so you'll have teachers that don't really have a great resume. It was disappointing, and dropping $30 grand for this school sucked as well. What I did take advantage is the technology, equipment and up-to-date software they had at the students disposal and pretty much self taught myself Flash, Director, 3D Max, etc... I ended up stopping at my associates instead of the B.A. and went on with my career. And yes with a strong portfolio will get you jobs in this industry, they won't hire the guy that made stick figures instead. Like someone mentioned hear its all motivation, if you like it you will learn it no matter what. I'm not putting down going to school, but if you do, research the school, the teachers, etc... Heck, I found out later there were other schools with people from the industry teaching at certain schools part-time around my area.