<p>I think the CS education on campus is pretty useless. It’s very theoretical, focused on teaching algorithms, ideas, and abstractions than on actually practice with writing code. Unless you go into academia or private research, solid experience with large team projects will be more attractive and valuable.</p>
<p>In my working experience, I find those who’ve never had a proper CS education in college and who instead spent time developing an open-source application to be far more skilled at a programming job. However, they were far less likely to be hired than someone who managed to get a CS degree.</p>
<p>Also know that CS as a field won’t be too attractive for much longer. My coworkers at large firms have reported very low job satisfaction, salary stagnation, eroding skill-set, and age discrimination.</p>