[Agingcoder]

The exact same thing happened to me, and this is how I discovered algorithmic complexity. Sorting my triangles took forever (I saw it in the profile, taking a whopping 90% of the time ) and I eventually figured there might be a proper sorting algorithms out there.

I was at the same time happily churning out assembly code, talking to the vga card, writing a dos extender, etc.

You can actually do quite a few things without formal education!