I've been a professional developer for almost 15 years now. I've worked with a hundred folks over the years.

Only about half of them had a degree. Of those with a degree, only 1/3 had a degree that was related to tech in any way.

Hiring managers have come to the realization that credentials mean next to nothing these days. Also, a Computer Science degree means you have met the requirements for a degree in Computer Science. Programmers are not doing Computer Science, they are programming.

A Comp. Sci. degree isn't worthless. I value mine because it gave me a solid, mathematical foundation to venture into math-heavy topics like machine learning and quantum computing. But it's by no means necessary for day-to-day programming tasks.

Slash, burn, restart from scratch after consulting with whatever stakeholder / BA is needing the project on the business side.

Don't worry. That guy left, will get re-hired somewhere else in no time because developers are in such short supply everywhere, and he will immediately begin telling everyone at the new place how terrible the old place was. I can already hear the complaints of how he was being held back by incompetence at his last gig and how he was the only one keeping the place afloat. There will be prognostications of how your company will shortly go under because he left.

I've heard it all before, I'll hear it all again. I'm actually hearing it now from a guy whom we hired six months ago. That's just how it be, though.

Just remember that a Comp. Sci. degree means someone understood computer science well enough to get a degree. Do not make the mistake that many people make and assume that Computer Science as an academic discipline has anything at all to do with on-the-ground software development.

Comp. Sci. is a mathematical discipline. Actual software development is basically the blue-collar work of the white-collar world. It's technical, but it has way more in common with jobs like electrician and plumber than it does with any mathematical discipline (in most shops).

If I knew then what I know now, I would have skipped the Comp. Sci. degree and just went straight to work.

Just represent your board as a single array where each position is either 1 or 0 and then XOR it against an array of the same dimension that is all 0's.

0 XOR 0 = 0 1 XOR 1 = 0 1 XOR 0 = 1 0 XOR 1 = 1

Currently in the process of converting an Angular app to MVC for my company.

The last guy did one angular app, the one I'm converting, then left. He wanted to get that sweet, sweet angular ninja cred on his resume so he could get a job at one of the local coding bootcamps teaching.

I get the idea of angular. I like the idea of angular. I don't like the results of using angular.