[hackNightly]

No CS degree here, currently working as Senior Front-end developer after 5+ years in the field.

1) I found it most frustrating to try and choose between learning what's the most popular new technology and what would help me advance my career. It turns out, focusing on mastering the basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript have gotten me much further than trying to jump on every new bandwagon that rolls by.

2) Honestly, the single greatest resource has been my side projects. All of the tutorials, training and learning from Google have been far surpassed by the amount of knowledge I've gained from sitting down and hacking on ideas. I seriously have had 1million side projects in my 5 years and each of them has been a challenge and an amazing learning experience.

Hope that helps

[TheSageMage]

#1 Very true. If you are creating a lot of personal projects than you can hop on many bandwagons, but for a majority of enterprise coding, have the web stack + C#/Java/Other major language is all that will be required of you.