After 8 months where were you as a pilot? Were you ready to fly cross country solo? Programming is hard because you may understand the solution, but you don't

After 8 months where were you as a pilot? Were you ready to fly cross country solo? Programming is hard because you may understand the solution, but you don't know your equipment well enough yet to get you there. If you know what kind of industry you want to work in (Games, Web, Enterprise) focus on the tools that are used in that industry (C++, Django, .Net). Once you zero in on these specifics it will be much easier to find a mentor/community, because a flight instructor is pretty useless if he doesn't know where the landing gear is.