I taught myself to program because I was interested and I found that I loved it. I loved it so much that I learned a lot of it. Then I tried to get a job… and found that no one would call me back if I sent in a resume without any formal experience.

So I went to a 2-year college and took programming courses. It was blindingly easy, so I used the class time to read ahead and keep teaching myself. Example: In the C++ intro course I spent 3 weeks learning what we were going to cover that semester, then started reading ahead and learning as much as time would permit. (Side note: this can be dangerous. Handing in a simple count to 10 for loop exercise done with classes and iterators will tend to make the professor ask you where you copied it from.)

After two years I had learned that college was a joke and I got a piece of paper saying I knew what I knew already.

Armed with my paper I got a job as a programmer in short order.