I am pretty much self taught since the age of 14 (back in the early 80's). Started using BASIC on an old TRS-80 and then a Vic-20 after that before moving to a

I am pretty much self taught since the age of 14 (back in the early 80's). Started using BASIC on an old TRS-80 and then a Vic-20 after that before moving to an IBM PC/XT. I bought a copy of Turbo Pascal when it first came out and that was really my first foray into the world of 'real' programming. I think I made my first $$ from a software sale from a Turbo Pascal simple point of sale system I wrote for a pharmacy. Since then, I've pretty much taught myself several other languages over the years. I find books and video courses to be of low value (NOTE: To ME, others may find opposite results). Latest work is in Ruby and Javascript etc. using SQL backends. I've found the best way for me to really get to grips with any language is to start building small 'real world' projects with it and experience all the triumphs and pitfalls along the way. Having said that, I do struggle with some new concepts these days. NoSQL still baffles me, and I never got the hang of Ruby on Rails (my latest web app is 25,000+ lines of Ruby but in a Sinatra based framework). So, no formal software development training, but I have the love for creating stuff out of code that keeps me motivated to constantly learn.