You won't believe how far you can get these days with relatively modest means. "Rocket science isn't rocket science" - that's what lots of people involved say last decade at least. Alt-space movement is the witness to that.
A young composer met mozart and said 'I want to write a symphony, where do I start?'. Mozart spins him a story about starting with short pieces, then apprenticing to a serious composer, mastering the different instruments and gradually working up to it.
The young composer is surprised. 'You didn't do all that'. 'Ah,' says mozart, 'but I didn't ask anybody how'.
I used to think that all the "geniuses" didn't ask anyone on how to do things at all, and just go for it. Turned out that they do, and luckily for us, in the internet age we have history.
I like how your interpretation of 'do things' is 'set UA string in java spiders'. Einstein visited bohr to rap about the speed of light and larry page asked a mailing list how to use java libraries.
Steve jobs asked a lot of people like Intel CEO, HP CEO etc. He made all these successful people his mentor. And, it is well documented in his biography as well in 'Becoming Steve Jobs' book. This is how he became so good in his craft.
http://space-access.org