When your brother says he likes to code, what does he mean by that? Does he like grokking out web apps, does he find hacking away on a bash terminal far more interesting, or does he enjoy implementing algorithms in a variety of languages?
If he likes grokking web apps, and foresees himself not deviating too far from this career path, then lots of proven coding experience + open source commits might work out for him better than going to college.
That being said, as someone with recent CS Uni experience in the States, I found my time there quite helpful from a knowledge perspective. From a pure CS/coding perspective, CS curriculum introduced me to lots of different computing fields and concepts, as well as provided a mentor/teacher to explain them I might not have found in the "real world", beyond basic data structures and algorithms. Exposure to some of the upper level math also helped hone problem solving skills. Ultimately, I think it ended up working for me, I left with a pretty wide range of knowledge--practical and theoretical--and decent problem solving skills I can apply to most problems.
I don't know anything about UT's program, but I will say if your brother wants to get into lower level coding, a decent CS degree will go a long way to giving him the basic theory & knowledge to jump into the field.
Comments
When your brother says he likes to code, what does he mean by that? Does he like grokking out web apps, does he find hacking away on a bash terminal far more interesting, or does he enjoy implementing algorithms in a variety of languages?
If he likes grokking web apps, and foresees himself not deviating too far from this career path, then lots of proven coding experience + open source commits might work out for him better than going to college.
That being said, as someone with recent CS Uni experience in the States, I found my time there quite helpful from a knowledge perspective. From a pure CS/coding perspective, CS curriculum introduced me to lots of different computing fields and concepts, as well as provided a mentor/teacher to explain them I might not have found in the "real world", beyond basic data structures and algorithms. Exposure to some of the upper level math also helped hone problem solving skills. Ultimately, I think it ended up working for me, I left with a pretty wide range of knowledge--practical and theoretical--and decent problem solving skills I can apply to most problems.
I don't know anything about UT's program, but I will say if your brother wants to get into lower level coding, a decent CS degree will go a long way to giving him the basic theory & knowledge to jump into the field.