I never took any university courses on programming/computer science, and I'm working full-time as a product developer at a digital agency. In fact, when I inte

I never took any university courses on programming/computer science, and I'm working full-time as a product developer at a digital agency. In fact, when I interviewed at FreshForm, I wasn't asked any questions about my college/courses. Everything was based on the work I'd done, which came as a result of learning over about 4 years. I started slow with html, css, etc. Then moved on to PHP/MySQL, eventually started building crappy web apps. And now I'm building better web and mobile apps with Ruby, etc. Year 5 is really when everything clicked for me, but I was going through school and not focused 110% on it. I learned mostly from online tutorials, and building side projects that kept me interested. Books were/are helpful at times, but most of the time you will learn the most by jumping in over your head and figuring everything out the hard way. But there are fundamentals that need to be learned up front and books are a great medium for that.