[daraul]

I'm far from being a professional programmer, and until the last year of my life I'd never written anything work-quality. However, you've pretty much nailed it on the tools needed for a beginning programmer: They'll learn anything to do whatever it takes, if it's for a game or something else they're equally passionate about.

That's exactly how I started programming, with QBASIC gorillas, savegame hex editing, and Robot Battle AI programming. I eventually muddled my way through QuakeC, because it was for fun. It was only really at this point that I was ready for proper training materials.