Hello everyone, Formal and Informal education has always been a debatable issue, some people prefer pure formal, some prefer pure informal and some use both. Recently I have discovered that informal education is as important as formal education if not even more, as long as you have the enthusiasm and love for the subject you are working on. Informal education started with me since the days I was at school, but it has always been instigated by formal education by being introduced to basics and then I would carry on with the advanced stuff on my own. Actually, in the subjects that I love I just couldn't tolerate reaching a point were I will have to rely on the teacher to learn, I always preferred being experienced in things I like beforehand through informal education, I always feel that time is running and there is no time to wait for class. In my opinion formal education is important but it is just a starter in some cases. Also formal education can help in making you learn things you don't like much, and not experienced much in that may be useful to you when you work on stuff you like.

Anyways, I a sure this forum is full of Geeks who are full with enthusiasm and love to what they do, many people here learned lots of stuff on their own and do much better than many who just followed formal education and always relied on the teacher and classroom(I am not saying that is bad, but IMO insufficient), whether on the level of programming, web development, electronics and robotics. There is always that feeling that you are so happy, despite doing mistakes while you are learning on your own and the feeling of joy while doing what you love whether you learned through school or on your own.

So please ladies and gentlemen, share your experience, ideas, thoughts, and beliefs, about informal education v.s. formal education education here, I would love to hear about your experience, have a good day :)

EDIT: Here are some interesting links about the subject you may like to check out:

http://www.infed.org/i-intro.htm
http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2010/02/28/formal-vs-infor.html