> There's clearly strong feelings in this thread.It's always like this when it comes up, which is fairly often here, and I think you're right to point this out. It's an emotionally loaded topic, which means it's a hard one to actually get useful data from.
I think there's a couple of things going on here:
The path someone takes to get where they are is a huge part of their identity. So when they look back on their own history, they want to feel that that path is a good, valuable one because it implies that they are valuable people. So everyone who doesn't have a degree has an incentive to feel it's not important. Likewise, everyone who has a degree wants to feel it is.
The thing is, they're both right. There are many many paths and almost all of them are worthwhile human experiences. Many of them even lead to being a good software engineer. (And of those that don't, they still often lead to being a valuable human in other, often more important ways.)
But the reason it's useful to write about this stuff is for people that are looking ahead and trying to choose a path. Those people want to know the odds of each path and how likely it is to work out for them. Unfortunately, a long list of anecdotes is really hard to synthesize into that. It's like trying to figure out where to eat dinner when every single restaurant review is five stars.
I don't have good data either, but if you're trying to pick your path, I would think about your personality and how that's likely to interact with your choice:
Not going to school gives you more freedom to explore your interests and choose a unique, idiosyncratic path. If you are driven and focused, you can get farther down a road than most others will because you have the freedom to focus on areas where you are passionate. If you want to stand out, it's easier to do so this way.
At the same time, if you aren't self-directed and passionate, you can end up meandering and going nowhere. No one will tell you what to do and it's easy to end up doing nothing, or just dabbling a little in a million things. All of the onus to create structure and discipline is on you.
School will give you a structured environment to learn in. It gives you a curriculum crafted by experts so you will be introduced to topics in a reasonable order and you'll be shown things you might not have realized are important. You'll also absorb much of the culture and tribal knowledge of the field. However, this is skewed towards academia, and if your goal is ultimately industry, this may not be pure win.
Personally, I think going to school is generally a good, safe bet. You'll learn a lot, have a good experience, and meet a lot of people. You'll take a bunch of non-CS classes that will round you out as a human. Even though I dropped out, I got a ton out of my limited college experience, mostly not related to programming.
Not getting a degree is a higher variance path. You may blaze a trail and end up somewhere exciting and unique. You could be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Or you could end up flipping burgers, or underpaid because you're at a company that values degrees.