Do you really need a college degree to learn computer programming and to get a programming job?

At least in the United States, it's not necessary, but it will be an enormous help. My opinion, which I think I've posted elsewhere, is that college provides you with three things for your money: Motivation:  Learning on your own, you have no deadlines to complete projects and nobody to compare against your own progress.  Also, if you get sick of doing the work, there's nobody to force you to stick it out until the new year, for example. Networking:  A college surrounds you with your future colleagues.  You see your classmates every day.  Adjuncts come from industry (sometimes management).  Full-time professors often have strong industry contacts.  There are alumni events.  There is usually a "career services" department to help you with job applications. Credentials:  Degrees come with someone who will verify that you passed classes. There's nothing in the curriculum you can't learn on your own, but it's hard to deny the importance of those three things to the job hunt.  Consider: Hiring managers want someone who will push to turn in assignments on time.  A good proxy for that for a younger or non-traditional candidate is a good GPA, since most of that grade comes from doing work on time.  Likewise, graduating near the top of your class carries the weight that you're probably better than the candidates who didn't. You've heard that most opportunities aren't published.  If you're entirely on your own, you'll never see those positions.  The more people in the industry you keep in contact with, though, the more likely you'll hear about them. Human Resources departments only want to bring candidates to the hiring managers that they're sure are worth interviewing, because it costs time to review a resume and more time to interview.  Since the first person to review your resume might be the only person to review it, and since that person does not have any background in programming work, they'll often rely on proxies like job experience or a degree.  If you don't have either, they won't look further, just because the next candidate is going to be a much easier decision.  You'll also find companies that will not hire without a degree, full-stop.  In other words, those three non-education things that a degree gets you can be huge advantages.  You can overcome or replace them, of course, though it's hard to say what the best path is for any individual. But, for example, work experience (including personal projects, Open Source contributions, etc.) goes a long way to overcoming the motivation and to a lesser extent credentialing problem, just like nobody cares about a traditional student's GPA after their first job or two.  Handling deadlines, user feedback, and so forth shows that you can handle a job. Networking is a little more difficult building from scratch.  But making a name for yourself online is a start (think https://stackoverflow.com, for example, and social media) and you can join the local chapters of the relevant professional organizations (http://acm.org and https://www.computer.org/portal/web/guest/home for starters) and get involved at all the events in your area.  Start long before you're planning a job search so that it's not about the job search. The credentials, though, are still going to be an obstacle.  The easiest way I've seen people get around it is to start working for smaller companies that just don't have a dedicated Human Resources department.  In that case, the resumes go directly to the hiring manager, who has a better way to skim through than just checking for a degree and looking for keywords.  And again, anything that counts as work experience is useful to making that case. I hope that's of some use.  The main point, I guess, is that it's going to be a lot more work and you'll need to be more of a salesman to get your foot in the door, but it's absolutely doable.

No !!! Not at all. See this -->>

yes

Not at all you don't need degree for any thing at least not for programming ..To sharpen your programming skills all you need is pure dedication the more you practice the better you become in making programmes .. There are lot of Tutorials available online just go through them ..Become a member of a coding forum write blogs etc etc ..