[krstck]

I started programming (professionally) this year after transitioning from a completely different career. I lucked into my current gig by basically impressing my future employer with enthusiasm for programming. I also am kind of a rarity, as there are probably less than a handful of professional programmers in my rural Texas town of 15k people, and seemingly no one else was interested in Rails. So I've gone from Michael Hartl's tutorial to an actual job with customers in less than a year, without a CS degree or anything like that.

I honestly think the best way to learn programming is to make yourself by having a project. I'd been dabbling in online courses for a year and a half beforehand, but I don't think I learned much until I had a customer that said "I want something that does this, can you do it?", and just having to figure it out.