i'm working with a guy who got his BSc. CS and he knows some things but has almost no programming experience, zero architecture skills

my previous colleague prior to this had a MSc. CS! from 2009

also very little actual programming experience.

nothing teaches you how to make this stuff work like trying to make this stuff work

you only need highschool advanced mathematics and basic CS principles and a willingness to trawl the papers relevant to the thing you are trying to do, and searching github and so on for prior attempts, either in your chosen language or in a close relative

the biggest opportunity cost for developing skills at this stuff is having the free time to do it

smart guys who don't know much tech yet but were smart enough to stack sats up to this point are right ahead of the game

others, like me, found other ways, usually involving shitcoin projects, but hey, it gets you the experience, that's all that matters