[nir]

Find a niche which is new - so no one has years of experience doing it - and appealing enough that there's a strong demand for skilled coders. Right now, iPhone and Android are two examples of such fields, there's probably some more.

Build a small app in it, and put it online for people to download. This will both teach you the skills and show you can produce results. That should be enough - no one will care about your experience/education/etc if you can show past work in an in-demand field.