1. You're young enough where any missteps aren't (yet) in a position to possibly hold you back. 2. You have acquired a useful and employable skill, which is oft

1. You're young enough where any missteps aren't (yet) in a position to possibly hold you back. 2. You have acquired a useful and employable skill, which is often not the case for those who graduate HS. 3. This skill is primarily self-motivated and results oriented, meaning that you're likely to be able to get into a startup/smaller company demonstrating proficiency. 4. You're in a good spot, if not ahead of the game. If you can write code, you can get paid writing code. Never forget that. My advice is: Get your diploma/GED. This prevents further education(college, etc.) from being closed off, as well as allows you to demonstrate that you are disciplined: "Yea, I got really into programming, but I realized this education was important and I completed it" Start networking via meetups, hackathons, etc. It never hurts to know people in the industry, and in your situation the advice and mentorship will be invaluable. Never stop learning and growing. This is especially important in your situation because you're unencumbered by technical/business decisions made by others. When employed your growth/learning often takes a backset to the company/team, so take full advantage of your free time now. I used to think time spent just playing around with frameworks/libraries and not even building apps from it was wasted, but it was incredibly valuable for learning as I got to dig in as far as I wanted, not just "add feature X and move on."