I'm self-taught, mostly. Started programming on Basic on handmade ZX Spectrum 64K, purchased by parents from classified ad in local newspaper, when I was 8 y.o.

I'm self-taught, mostly. Started programming on Basic on handmade ZX Spectrum 64K, purchased by parents from classified ad in local newspaper, when I was 8 y.o., just to be able to write my own games. Switched to Turbo Pascal (and to Tasm) in school, when I was in 6th grade (11 y.o.), after "inventing" bubble sort. By that time we were hacking good old computer games to get infinite lives and money. Primary role of my C.S. teacher by that time was to give me computer time and employ in school as part-time computer classes technician when I was 14. When our class was 16, we were told that there is new cool language for web, called Java and we will have an exam on it by the end of the year. We happily dove into it. Our teachers were learning it together with us (they also were setting up Linux for the first time, but I and my friends were too busy playing funny game of hacking/counter-hacking the admin passwords to the Novell network we had in our school). When I was 17, I graduated from school and moved to Moscow to study quantum physics and electronics in MIPT, but it was quite busy time to survive (1998), so I learned HTML and started developing web sites for money for beer. Few years later I've got my first full-time job as Java developer and from that time I've never gave up a hobby that one day had become my profession. Forgot to note, that I was learning by books, not from Internet. When I was a MIPT student, my spending on books could be up to 50% of my income ($400/month or so).