[dgb23]

Point 1 sounds interesting but I can't comment on it, because I don't remember ever having encountered it.

Point 2:

One of the most important techniques as a self-taught programmer is to develop an instinct for "foundational solution that wants to get out" so to speak. So you search for the name of the type of problem you're looking at or for the approach you half-way discovered. You don't have a tutor or professor who will tell you where you are, so you need to figure that out yourself, often by assuming that someone else already put a label on the map.

On the other hand, self-taught does not mean "you don't have theory". From my experience getting the raw knowledge is the easy part. There are a lot of excellent resources out there, from book recommendations/compilations to freely available lectures and so on.

The thing that I always missed or were generally harder to come by are far more precious than that: guidance and feedback from teachers/mentors, interaction with peers who are in the same boat and most importantly time.