I never went to a good school, college or university, so can I become a good programmer and get recruited by the top companies?

A career in IT is quite a meritocracy. However, there are companies that simply filter CVs based on education. You'll find that those companies are the ones that are extremely process driven and just want a cog. So, for a creative programmer, education isn't a barrier, but for a formal code factory it can prevent your work getting in front of people in the first place. Personally, I prefer the creative code shop that builds teams on skillsets rather on whether  a candidate can verbatim list all the patterns in gang of four, or rifle off a top ten of tech bloggers they follow.

My graduation school never really gave emphasis on programming skills. I remember just one faculty member who really encouraged us to code other than that everybody had the textual approach.During the first 2 semesters we didn't have a single course on programming, literally the syllabus covered the basics of every other engineering discipline but nothing related to coding. In the third semester we started off with basics of C programming and in the fourth semester we had Introduction to Data Structures and algorithms. Around mid of third semester  I got to know this guy . While we all were (includes me and a couple of friends of mine) were dealing C and data structures very seriously he had started exploring various possibilities with coding. He used to discuss with me many of the projects he was trying to do back then and so many things which he had learnt while all others were after the outdated textbooks. It sounded like Greek and Latin to me very first, but he being an awesome person never let me feel insecure and made me go a little beyond text books. Its been 3 years after graduation. He is still the hungry learner. Whenever we talk he will have something technically advanced to discuss about.The quality of graduation school was never a hindrance for him to be what he always wanted to be and to embrace what he really loved from heart !

I once heard from Cornell CS grad, that he learned most of his coding skills outside of the degree. Furthermore, he said, in his job (at the time) as a developer at one of the leading traveling websites, he only used 10% of what the school taught him

I strongly recommend online courses from http://lynda.com, http://teamtreehouse.com or http://udacity.com Decide whether you wish to develop for web (javascript, php/ruby/python/) or mobile(swift/java- android). Gauge yourself with projects you complete from the course instructor notes.When fairly comfortable with your skills, start applying for light jobs from http://upwork.com or http://freelancer.com. This will help you earn as you improve your skills. You might be lucky and get into some great teams that you will learn from. Also use stackoverflow not only to mine answers but also build a profile providing answers and opinions to different problems. By the time you complete your undergraduate, you should have the skills and experience to work for yourself or any great company as you prefer.

I'm an employer myself in IT, not for a large firm but still interviewed about 500 people in my career. The bottom line is what you can demonstrate that you can bring to the company. An employee is nothing less than a sub-contractor working for a client, you need to bring money to your client and be profitable for it. If you become an awesome programmer, present well, bring confidence in the interview AND most importantly walk your talk, you'll get hired for sure. PS: Choose your programming language. One mistake people do is to get kickass in one language only. Remember at time those gurus in Visual Basic.... Most of them hasn't been able to find another job. Here I hire only versatile developers, who have the programming mindset and who can switch from a language to another. I have for example an incredible guy who knows 7 programmings languages. Yeah some guys will say it's impossible, but you know what, it's only syntax, and it's like a mechanician who switch from Mercedes to BMW, he'll be good too.

I find that software work is one of the least degree-conscious fields you can get into.  The reason for that is simple -- your programming skill has little to nothing to do with what facts you've learned, and everything to do with how skilled you are at conceptualizing problems and translating them into the set of tasks at which computers excel.  If you can do that, it doesn't matter if you didn't graduate grade school -- you can still get a good job as a programmer. Do you know what my degree is in?  Philosophy.  In just about any other field that would be a deal-breaker.  In this field, not a single prospective employer has raised an eyebrow at it.

I don't think there is any better evidence of this along with strategy to achieve it as a real life example of some one who has done it i.e. and then talked in detail about how as well. You at least have a relevant degree - he didn't even have that. https://medium.com/@davidbyttow/abc-always-be-coding-d5f8051afce2

Great advice has been given in a lot of the answers to your question and it's true you should code code code. But becoming a good programmer is so much easier if you have a good teacher. The lucky few that get to go to Stanford, MIT and other top universities get to experience this every day and I hope they realize just how lucky they are. The good news is, so can you and it won't even cost you a penny. Start here: I was blown away by how good this man teaches and I wish I had discovered it years earlier. So watch all the videos and suck up all that sweet sweet info, then continue on sites like http://coursera.org and http://novoed.com Good luck!

In one word - "Chad Fowler"(OK - that was 2 words...)From his blog post... http://chadfowler.com/blog/2011/12/21/re-thinking-software-development-education/ "I am a self-taught software developer. To date, my formal education consists of two 3-day training classes on specific programming languages..."Chad Fowler is the author of Passionate Programmers- a must read for anyone wanting to develop a career in Software developmenthttp://www.amazon.com/The-Passionate-Programmer-Remarkable-Development/dp/1934356344http://www.amazon.com/The-Passionate-Programmer-Remarkable-Development/dp/1934356344 His linked in profile...https://www.linkedin.com/in/fowlerchad So my dear friend- sky is the limit...Good luck !