I too was entirely self-taught and had very little opportunity to work with other programmers, right up until I got a job writing system software. I simply mad

I too was entirely self-taught and had very little opportunity to work with other programmers, right up until I got a job writing system software. I simply made it my priority to become obsessed with data structures, algorithms, and software engineering. I read every such book I could find and wrote code to implement things. It was harder back then, before the internet. There were far fewer books at the bookstores. Nearly everyone told me I could never be a software developer without a CS degree. This is a solveable problem, if you really want to solve it.