This is also how I kick started everything long time ago. I am also self taught and is working in an environment that developed web applications running on the

This is also how I kick started everything long time ago. I am also self taught and is working in an environment that developed web applications running on the Microsoft Stack, I learned myself how to install an AD controller, SQL Server, Web Server etc and eventually I had a mini enterprise domain environment running at home. I learned how to write an application for it, how to deploy it, etc. Throughout all the years I have kept that environment (rebuilt a million times) and over time added more and more features and using new products and version. It gave me insights that my peer developers didn't have. I became aware of the entire life cycle associated with an application and learned enough of the various moving parts to understand the full picture of what was going with the application we work with at daytime-job. To have this understanding gives you a huge leap over your peer developers that only understand what is going on inside of the code silo. My AD environment might not be of a quality that could be deployed in production in a real enterprise, but it enabled me to participate in discussions with infrastructure people and to better understand what could be root cause of the errors I had to troubleshoot during a normal days of work. Having my own mini enterprise setup also allowed me to check out and learn about future features and suddenly you find yourself capable participating in talks with architects. In addition as subscription to Plural sight online training also helps in learning quick and get a overview of various tech.