No real advice, but I can tell you exactly what I did with very little background (not that I'm any good at it.) 1. Took a biology class that involved using m

No real advice, but I can tell you exactly what I did with very little background (not that I'm any good at it.) 1. Took a biology class that involved using matlab. Found the matlab part more fun than the biology. 2. Went through this course on my own one week: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1130/2009fa/index.html http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1130/2009fa/index.html At the time, almost of the materials I needed to do the homework was online. I'm not sure if that's still the case. 3. Took a class in data structures and programming in java. I've never worked so hard in my life. 4. Profit! (Yeah... no :P) My current step 4 is downloading open source projects I want to do something to (mostly in python) and futzing with them.