I would add the most important thing is to start getting paid to learn programming. This doesn’t necessarily mean getting a full time job as a software engineer

I would add the most important thing is to start getting paid to learn programming. This doesn’t necessarily mean getting a full time job as a software engineer (yet) but smaller more manageable things. For example, take a boring task you already do in work or daily life and try and figure out how you could make it more automatic. This will be slow, painful and frustrating at first, but if you spend the time banging your head against the wall now, and are truest motivated, it will take you where you want to go.