It's hard to pin down a reason, honestly. I started teaching myself programming in my teens - using books from the school library, and a copy of Turbo Pascal w

It's hard to pin down a reason, honestly. I started teaching myself programming in my teens - using books from the school library, and a copy of Turbo Pascal which I pirated off school computers. > It was personal interest and pure fascination with algorithms, that got me started. I remember getting a real kick out of understanding new things. Like when recursion first clicked for me... that was a great moment. I felt amazing. I later went to university, but never finished my computer science studies. They never felt amazing, never provided that "it clicked" moment of understanding - but were full of tedious chores. I had to do side jobs for financial reasons, and I learned soooo much more on these jobs than I ever learned from lectures. So eventually side jobs turned into full-time employment and I just stopped going to lectures. > It was working on real projects that made me accumulate the knowledge and experience that defines my pay grade today. But it surely did require some grit and doggedness at several points along the journey to stick with it... and the reason for me personally sticking it out has probably less to do with determination, than it has to do with a slight aversion to changing workplaces because of social awkwardness... ^_^' So, yeah. Many factors playing into this.