No one mentored me when I started programming. We had Internet fairly early so I looked into how to make my own website. This taught me HTML (no CSS back then!)

No one mentored me when I started programming. We had Internet fairly early so I looked into how to make my own website. This taught me HTML (no CSS back then!) and some basic PHP. Then I became interested in game programming (I was still a kid after all) and entered the world of "real" programming: C++, the Win32 API (urghhh) and OpenGL. My dad studied electrical engineering at the Navy and had a library of study books that I never bothered to look into. One day, one or two years after I got into C++, I decided to have a look. Surprisingly, I found some really interesting CS books, amongst others the OS book by Tanenbaum, with the full source code of Minix printed at the end of the book (12,000 lines of code iirc).