[whiddershins]

I would say, if you don’t want to attend formal schooling, do a combination of:

Build some stuff yourself, whatever it might be. Website, automation of daily tasks, it doesn’t matter. Make something that works. Most people can’t complete a project, so if you can, you’re valuable.

Take some free online computer science courses. I really like the MIT intro to computer science for non-programmers. You’d be shocked how many people who work as developers can’t do basic stuff you would learn in even an intro course. If you have some theoretical formal knowledge and combine that with the ability to execute in the real world, you are rare and valuable.