By your own admission you were totally aimless. I understood from your post that nobody said to you "hey, this is an interesting and worthwhile thing to pursue"

By your own admission you were totally aimless. I understood from your post that nobody said to you "hey, this is an interesting and worthwhile thing to pursue". The fact that you were attracted to programming and not some useless activity (like mastering sports) seems to me the result of pure dumb luck.