i'm self taught. i coded C64 stuff as a kid. i read the manual, took it from there. then during my teens i did other stuff (mostly party). when i with 19 i re

i'm self taught. i coded C64 stuff as a kid. i read the manual, took it from there. then during my teens i did other stuff (mostly party). when i with 19 i realized that i will be a father shortly after my 20th birthday i decided to get a job (it was 1998). i looked into the newspaper (dead tree with ink on it) and there were a lot demand for "web-designers" (the dot com bubble finally reached europe). i went to a job interview. told them "yeah, i can do it" and that i will start in two weeks. bought a book about HTML and one about webdesign directly after the interview. read the books and "coded" (i know HTML isn't code but at that time it counted) for two weeks, started the job. did the same as before (reading books, "coding") now for good money. that was the point that i realised, if you read a (good) book about a technical topic - and understand it - you know 99% more abut this topic then anyone else on the planet about it. you are not an expert, no, you still have a very long road to go to become an expert, but well, you are in the top 1%. then i repeated this pattern: CGI, perl, flash (version 2 i think, or was it 3), PHP 3, ... some years down the road ruby, node.js, coffeescript, clojur, haskell, .... so what are the three things you need * motivation (becoming a father and don't have any real money is in most cases a quite effective motivation) * a good book (at that time i just chose the next oreily book, today i would say check out pragprog) * the will to make sacrifices (no party, no alcohol, no TV, these are time and motivation black holes)