Background: I'm a USA citizen but I'm living abroad in a country with a joke university system. I have a B.S. in Physics and I've been an online pro poker for a decade. I am still doing well and I have no intention to quit playing poker in the immediate future, but online poker isn't exactly the most future-proof industry so a back-up plan seems prudent.

I recently started studying computer science independently through MIT OCW, ArsDigita, Stanford SEE and MOOCS with the end goal of writing poker analysis software. I could probably learn everything I need through these resources, but if I'm going to put in the effort to learn all the material, it might make more sense to earn a second bachelors in CS instead through this program:

Oregon State B.S. in Computer Science – Online (Post-baccalaureate)

The degree costs ~$27,600 which isn't trivial money, but it's not going to require loans or lifestyle changes or anything. Still, $27,600 >> $0 for self study.

A second B.S. with a great gpa could help to mitigate my resume gap and gives me the option to continue in an online M.S. program if I so desire. The problems with the OSU degree are as follows:

1. I'm lukewarm on the upper level coursework like 290 Web Dev and 496 Mobile Dev. They don't offer any math courses beyond Discrete Math.

2. My interest is in Machine Learning, so I would have to supplement with courses outside OSU in Math and ML (probably via Harvard Extension Online @ $1350/course for math and $2400/course for CS).

3. Students in the program have said that the course quality is nothing special compared to free online courses and MOOCs.

Anyone have some advice on what I should do?

CS is one of the best options for pro poker players to get themselves into imo.
I think you're really smart to choose it as another skill to develop and it is very marketable for employment.

The degree is always optional and really comes down to where you want to work.
The place you want to work, will ultimately be the ones deciding if degree is worthless or a reason to hire you.

If you can learn programming on your own by using the online resources that are free.
It seems like a no brainer to go with the free stuff if your employer will never care about degree.

Do you want to work on something that a startup would do.
Or do you want to use the skills on your own idea or freelance.
Work for a big company or small one that has no clue what you know compared to the next guy.

I think if you need the school to motivate you, then definitely go for the degree path no matter what.
If you don't need the motivation, well you have options that you personally will have to come to the conclusion on the multiple factors listed above.

I don't need the motivation from a degree and I am primarily interested in learning skills for my own project. The attraction of a post bacc is that it might open up more opportunities like getting an M.S. later(especially the Ga. Tech OMSCS) or getting positions that require a B.S. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to gauge whether or not I should spend the money and follow a sub-optimal curriculum just for the diploma.

Well if you don't need the motivation and are primarily interested in learning the skills for own project, you probably don't need that specific degree.

It really depends on which path will be better for you learning the skills then.
Will you be able to be guided to the better resources for learning the skills from that school or by asking around online or searching online.

As for the degree opening doors for other opportunities. Yes that probably is the case but I don't really know any specifics on degree from that school. It generally is just the case that what you listed will be helped by any degree from any school vs no degree.

Someone else will probably have more to say about it besides me.

I think degree/no-degree is a pretty tough question these days.

In terms of learning material - I really don't think they're necessary. For a motivated and intelligent person (who already has a physics degree) you should be able to get everything you need from free courses.

The benefit of the degree is that its a quick and easy way to show people you know something. And that definitely helps getting a job. If you're interested in doing a master's degree or more academic work in the future - it's also a good way to make contacts. So if you go the self-learning route you probably need to put in more effort to meet people and make contacts. This is things like attending meet-ups about interesting topics.

Assuming you're some-what comfortable with doing the self-marketing required, I'd skip the degree and just make sure to figure out a good program of online courses that covers all of the core CS fundamentals (algorithms, data structures, computer architecture, etc.) as well as the interesting/advanced topics you care about.

A lot of CS programs have the idea of a capstone project that happens in the final year of the degree. I think you need to do something similar with your studying. Spend a bunch of time building something interesting and real that you can show people to easily demonstrate your skills.

You majored in physics, which means people will immediately assume you're more awesome than the average bear. You're interested in learning a lot of cool stuff, which also makes you seem more awesome than the average bear. If you manage to do some cool projects on your own, you're going to get all sorts of interviews--whether you get through the gauntlet is another matter.

So, I don't think you need to go back to school unless you're looking for good internships (which I think are invaluable), or looking to work with other students and learn from them (def helps you improve more quickly).

Agree with Go_Blue, you have a degree in physics, so you really don't need to go back for a second degree. You should be able to get interviews as long as you start doing side projects and market yourself better.

If you insist on going to back to school, do so only so that you can network with other people and work with others. An online school is not going to fit that criteria.

Do you have a general idea of where you want to go in programming? If it's web-dev or mobile-dev, it's generally easier to break in the field by self-learning. If you are looking for machine learning or something really academic, then school I feel like is a better option.

Most CS jobs advertise a requirement of a STEM degree anymore. So, you seem to have that S part down. Wouldn't worry about a second degree. Maybe look for a cheap online community college? Somewhere you can take the basics if you're not comfortable learning on your own.

Contrary to my online persona, I'm rather introverted and quiet, so it's helpful to me to make contacts in class and through teachers. I couldn't network my way out of a paper bag.

Unfortunately, I can't do any internships because I need to maintain foreign residency 330 days/year for tax. I do think working with other students would be value and the program requires a fair number of group projects. Not worth paying $27,600 of course.

While it's not the same as a B&M school, I think there are networking opportunities, particularly if I need to apply to grad school.

Machine Learning all the way. I'm also interested in modelling/simulation. I'm not really interested in mobile/web dev at all. Unfortunately the OSU program doesn't have any electives, so I'm stuck taking mobile/web dev courses.

I did look into online community colleges but the rigor just isn't up to my standards. Decent online education for college credit is very expensive with the exception of the Georgia Tech Online Masters in CS.

It seems like the consensus is that I should just learn on my own. I definitely understand where everyone is coming from, but I'm still torn. If the degree cost $15,000 I think I'd snap take it. $27,600 just feels like a lot to spend for the advantages of a formal 2nd degree.

You don't need another BSc to do an MSc do you? Teach yourself a bit and if you need a formal qualification (or fancy the academic path) then do an MSc.

Hard to see any advantages to another BSc. Sounds like money down the drain and probably a fair bit of wasted time too.

If your degree is recent you can probably enroll in a masters program with very few credits required beforehand. I think you'd have have almost all the undergrad stuff knocked out already. Plus if you want rigor, you're going to have to work a bit harder and learn a bit more for a masters

Let's split the difference and thus the under/over on the price of the degree is $21,300 for you. So at $27,600 you are paying extra for a some insurance against the future. Also many job reqs throw in a lot of additional skills in addition to the required ones. Then there is the Georgia Tech CS Masters path that opens up. I don't know, seems like you couldn't go too far wrong ponying up the money and getting the extra degree.

The cost of the degree isn't necessarily the main cost here. Especially for a poker player that can directly convert time into money (as opposed to a salaried worker).

A formal program is a really slow way to learn. You're stuck taking courses that aren't relevant or interesting and can only be taken on a limited schedule.

Edit: Just to note, you're way over valuing working with other students in group work. Pick an open source project to work on something real with other motivated people and you'll get much better experience.

When you're starting out, it's an incredible opportunity to get to work side-by-side with someone talented. You get to see their approach to problems, how they go about debugging code, and you get to see all of their ticks with emacs, vim, grep, find, etc. You start to get much faster and better in general. I don't think it's any different from watching good poker players in action or playing against and practicing with better tennis players--there's something about it that just causes things to click.

Also, as an aside, I don't get people's obsession with focussing on the degree aspect. For all you know, you'll land an interesting job after taking a few classes. It seems like in the worst case you'd need to finish your degree (I didn't finish mine...although my wife and company want me to), but in the best case you'd find something you're interested in and see where it takes you.

GB, are you saying group work in school is useful because you get to work alongside people that can teach you a bunch?

You'd have much better luck going to a hackathon and trying to find actually talented people to work alongside.

If he's dead set on machine learning, OP is going to have to get into a good school with good focus on machine learning. It's easy to get a job in mobile/web by self-learning, not so much machine-learning. I feel like machine learning is more about having research experience, and going to some career-oriented school like OSU won't fit that goal. There's some good topics on this on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/

Not necessarily group work, but that's the gist of what I was getting at--hopefully you'll make some friends and work along side them on different things. A hackathon is a really good idea though--I've gone to a few of those and there are some freakishly talented people out there in the world.

I think you're probably right. I'm committed to Machine Learning because my primary motivation is to work on my own projects. However, I want to build a CV/Resume as a backup plan if online poker ever goes sideways.

My current plan is to work towards admission into Georgia Tech Online Masters in Computer Science. They are a top 10 CS school in the USA and they offer a Machine Learning track. The main problem is that I have no recommendations(GA Tech requires 3) and no CS course credits. I've been reading /r/MachineLearning/ to form a study plan and I'm confident that I can master the material I need to learn on my own. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to prove it to the admissions office even though they're far less selective than a B&M program.

There's a pretty good machine learning course on Coursera. I think if you work on a smallish project, and have that to show during an interview, that should help you a lot.

By the way, where are you playing poker?

Yeah, that course is definitely on my agenda, but I probably won't dive into ML until I've got some fundamentals out of the way like data structures/algorithms and I've reviewed some of the foundational math (multivariate calculus, linear algebra, optimization).

P.S. I'm in Philippines right now.

I think there's some IT work being done in Cebu if you're interested in getting a taste of it there. Sometimes a place will want to have a westerner in the shop for various reasons.

"My current plan is to work towards admission into Georgia Tech Online Masters in Computer Science. They are a top 10 CS school in the USA and they offer a Machine Learning track."

I wouldn't spend too much on a fancy degree. This industry is all about the volume and quality of work you can do. You'd get hired with a 7th grade education if your employer believed you could do the work they needed. I really think your best bet is teaching yourself as much as you can, and networking to get your foot in the door some place.

Do any of the certificated courses on Udacity etc help with admission?