This comment makes me realize how extremely lucky I was when I started learning to Program: I had a friend working for a local medical company; they wanted to

This comment makes me realize how extremely lucky I was when I started learning to Program: I had a friend working for a local medical company; they wanted to robo-call patients and remind them of appointments. They couldn't afford the existing $300,000 + $50,000 solution they were considering, and he told me if I could come up with something they would pay me $10,000. I had done some simple C++ programming in high school and knew I was good enough at programming, so I quit my job at HomeDepot and became an aspiring programming with a goal -- in my moms basement. I read about Asterisk (open source phone software), then about PHP (which didn't excite me), then about Python. I liked Python. I read the 1200 page "Learning Python" book, but I learned most from the Python chat room on freenode IRC. They were harsh but helpful: "you're code sucks" and "use twisted" and "read this". I manged to piece something together in 6 months and got the $10,000. From there, I got a entry level job, then job hopped for a 250% pay increase, then job hopped once more for another small pay increase, and now I'm here. I think most people don't get offer a free contract and a goal to work towards before they even start.