TL;DR ahead ;) (Born in 1981) at first I attended some programming language courses: Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Delphi, in my early teen years, that is in 90s

TL;DR ahead ;) (Born in 1981) at first I attended some programming language courses: Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Delphi, in my early teen years, that is in 90s. I even co-authored a series of articles on the subject to a nationwide magazine. (Poland, not USA). Subsequently I lost interest in the IT, I went on to study political science and only turned back to programming in about 2007. Starting from scratch, I picked up C#. I learned from books and by programming. I attended MCTS courses in college and got myself certified, but in retrospection I think it was a waste of money. I had quite an inferiority complex regarding my lack of formal education and experience. I didn't even start looking for a job until 2011, when my girlfriend forced me to get up on my feet and start sending CVs out :) So it was like 4 years after I began, but I worked full-time and didn't learn very intensively. Anyway, once I began looking for it, I landed a job quickly and needless to say, the moment I saw the code written by some of my predecessors in the years when I thought I wasn't ready to get paid for programming, some swear words left my mouth.