There really isn't any kind of significant investment required to learn this stuff. Take it from a guy who's new to actual developing too - I made music before

There really isn't any kind of significant investment required to learn this stuff. Take it from a guy who's new to actual developing too - I made music before I got deeper into developing and while the tools required to produce something worth listening to are certainly much easier to afford these days, it's still a long shot from all the free and open source resources related to programming. Honestly, the only limiting factors are time and motivation. Otherwise the current state of learning to code is close to perfect. On a sidenote though: With all those resources readily available, don't fall for the trap of being in love with preparing. I had a phase of getting stuck in a loop of doing one tutorial after another, setting up the editor again and again or generally spending too much time on minor things that make you feel like ticking checkboxes but actually don't move you forward. It happens all the time when one starts and learns somehing new - I saw it in music and audio too: People got obsessed with the tools instead of focusing on the work - whether it's that new eq or compressor (which actually isn't all that essential to the results) or starting the 17th tutorial before planning to finally tackles a real world project - in many cases those are just variations on the procrastionation theme. Just do it and learn as you go - afterwards you'll know which tools you really need.