This is an excellent question. Here is a blog post from a colleague of mine about how he got into professional programming without having an academic backgroun

This is an excellent question. Here is a blog post from a colleague of mine about how he got into professional programming without having an academic background in it: http://sharktank.co.uk/articles/how-i-got-into-programming/ http://sharktank.co.uk/articles/how-i-got-into-programming/ Now, I should say in advance that my colleague is very talented and not everybody can do what he did. You will notice, though, that he spent several years before he was able to make the jump. He's now a full stack developer and a good one at that. It is hard to give good advice because there are probably people who will hire you (at very low pay) even with as little experience as you have. You can then spend time working to improve on somebody else's dime. On the other hand, it will be very stressful because you will have a literal mountain to climb and you may even cause the failure of projects without realizing it. I think ideally, I would spend a considerable amount of time working on real projects on your own, spending 3-4 hours a day average. After a few years you will probably be more accomplished than many new grads out of university. The other approach is to go to school and get a degree. It is expensive (in time as well as money), but that piece of paper is worth its weight in gold at the beginning of your career. Whatever you do, good luck! Try to understand that it will be 10-20 years before you even realize how much you suck, so never give up trying to improve yourself :-) The only people who I've met who were not embarrassed about how bad they were at the beginning of their career are people who are still bad at their job.