Thank you all for the various responses!
CCN - I do dread the idea that he will end up on the other side of 25 without a degree and realize he's made a bad mistake; if I really thought he wouldn't benefit from a college education and the experience socially, I wouldn't be so concerned with keeping it on the table.
My college friends are still my best friends, for one thing. Finding people of similar interests and intellectual ability will be much less likely for him without going to college. I want him to finally be at a place where it's ok to read shakespeare for fun with your friends (ok maybe my college was weird).
My DH says he just wants to make sure it won't be 'required' by me...
If he gets into a job and realizes he hates it, I'd want him to have more options, not less, thus the degree.
ex: I have a degree in fine art; no one cares what it's in at this point, they just want to know I really wrote a couple of essays in my life and can probably do algebra and think.
I am in IT also, pretty successful considering my start;
I am a computer systems administrator
(regarding being a programmer
vs. systems admin, I heartily agree with the idea that the programmers tend to get the short end of the stick, hours-wise and software lifecycle wise
I swear whoever came up with the "agile" idea should have realized it would devolve into 'hurry up and throw something together by thursday every single week*'.
*Until you get so sick of it you quit.
Zen Scanner -
yes I definitely think he will be much happier if he is one of the people doing 'wow' stuff instead of one of the grunts churning out 'assets' in a 'piece work'/sweatshop arrangement.
"There are also deeper skills and explorations one can do in school that you may not get to in a job where you are trapped in release cycles. Some of the specialty areas in game development need fairly advanced knowledge like AI, physics, graphics, and performance tuning."
He has such an aversion for repetitive/non meaningful work I'm afraid he'll be completely miserable if he has to grind away in a dead end job...more miserable than the average joe, in a way.
One point in the article my husband sent: Especially don't go to college if you can just do what you want by going to the library (good will hunting anyone?);
the inverse being - DO GO to college if you are interested in STEM category career - this does include computer science/technology in general.
I would truly be delighted if this vid. game programming course our ds is taking really lights a (further) fire under him and he just plugs away for a couple years on that.
If he sticks with it beyond that, gets employment offers in addition to applying to college, I would likely not stand in his way, but at least try for part time college to keep the ball going.
I do hope getting him access to learning about this sooner rather than later will help him know whether it's for real his dream career. But almost everyone grows out of what they want to do when they are 12, so maximizing options is the ideal.
