The other way of looking at it is that some love for the craft is pretty much a prerequisite for the self-taught, whilst many graduates are there for the career.
N=1. I remember showing an incredibly competent CS colleague something I'd knocked-up one evening for fun.
They were super-impressed that I did _any_ coding out of hours, and suggested I try and sell it. Totally different worlds.
I have maybe N=5 of these people, but the one that comes to mind is the gent who was in my game programming classes who had already written his own direct x based game engine and was there to just expand on that knowledge.
N=1. I remember showing an incredibly competent CS colleague something I'd knocked-up one evening for fun.
They were super-impressed that I did _any_ coding out of hours, and suggested I try and sell it. Totally different worlds.