Those of you who learnt programming on your own and started a career in this field, how'd you guys go about it? Like what motivated you and how did you manage? Genuinely asking for a friend. :D

Here’s one I prepared earlier.

@Alice That's nice to know. Well, personally I believe this field is a great way of life actually so I don't think you have accomplished nothing. :D
I'm mildly surprised you don't have a job yet. I presume it's coz you're still studying?

@C0D4 Interesting. WebDev really seems to be the starting point for a lot of people. Did you start as a freelancer or did you get on with some sort of certification (if you don't mind my asking.)

@exceptionalGuy not certified, not a freelance.

Although it’s been a long road, I have worked for retailers, UI,UX business’s and currently a major retailer handling several ecommerce platforms.

WebDev is a good starting point, but you really need to break away from the mini sites (blogs, portfolios) and get into ecommerce and integrated systems development.

Toying with an Sinclair ZX80 my mom brought home when they held computer courses and could not leave the computers.

Later a few courses in basic and after that I learned pascal from the manual that came with the turbo pascal ide/compiler.

Then visual basic, javascript, c, c#

How I self learned was just doing projects that I wanted to do. Games, embedded systems, whatever.

Turned out like shit. Got rejected at every turn. Everyone said get a fucking degree.
Obviously I was pissed because I knew I'd learn more in practice.

Went to college, did a BSc in CS, got a job instantly.

In college I had the attitude to make sure I don't waste my time, so I spent as much time as I could doing side projects instead of slacking off.

I started with it by wanting to create Minecraft mods at 9, so I learnt Java. It started with Oracle's tutorial, then I moved on to a few books I found online. My motivation was always those mods, and as I grew out of it, I found new things I wanted to automate. I for one made a birb fetcher which, well, fetched birbs automatically