I agree with the notion that a traditional education can benefit a software developer. I'm also a developer, and I did a mixture of both traditional classes and learning on the job. If I had the time and money, I would have definitely went for my Bachelors in CS. The reason I didn't was because I was trying to ramp up my skills for a work opportunity and my employer at the time was paying for my classes to get me up to speed. But I can honestly say that some of my biggest brain-buster programming challenges came in some of those early college classes, particularly in Data Structures class. Great article.