One of the coolest things about software development is that you don’t need anyone’s permission to do it. If you need an application for your business or personal use, there isn’t a single thing stopping you from learning to code and writing it yourself. There’s no trade organization or governing body to seek approval from.
Now, if you want to practice law, or issue drug prescriptions, or even cut hair, you have to get permission from some government entity. But if you want to write the next viral application used by millions, you can just fire up your computer and start building. Nobody is going to stop you.
And more importantly, no one should stop you.
You don’t need a CS degree
Nor do you need to go to college to write code. For many professions, college and professional degrees are required. Sure, you could get a computer science degree, but I hold the somewhat contrary view that a CS degree isn’t nearly as valuable — or useful — as one might hope. It is an expensive way to learn something that you could teach yourself in a much shorter period of time. One can easily become a coding expert by watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, and looking at well-written code on GitHub.
In addition, a computer science degree normally doesn’t teach you many things you need to know to write code professionally. A CS student will learn about writing compilers and all kinds of grand theories about artificial intelligence, but probably not about the intricacies of Git and GitHub, or about how to write a good bug report. Standard algorithms and data structures are good to know, but the average developer doesn’t often write them. Few businesses will want you to spend time writing a doubly linked list when there is one ready to go in some standard library.
