I commend Steve's effort and hard work.

I am a dropout; and we have recruited dropouts, engineering graduates, MBAs and students pursuing a degree distance a learning program at our startup. The best recruits were actually the distance learning students and dropouts by far.

I always recommend young hackers to take a year or two off before going to college and figure out what they want to do. For most jobs in Internet, a University degree is hardly helpful.

In fact, you can actually learn more by working at start for a year than you would learn in 4 years in college. An undergraduate programmer who can network his way to a job can get salary similar to graduates. The only challenge will be to network and demonstrate your skills because recruiters won't be selling you.