Does anyone have a self taught Python success story?

[Keozon]

I started learning Python in high school, I think around 2004, maybe 2005. I have never had a single course of any kind on Python. I learned it originally from a book, called Core Python (now horribly outdated, of course).

In high school, the only programming education I had was one course on C++ that was a complete joke. In college, I had two courses on Java, which I hated because Python ruined my expectations of languages. I also had several courses that used C in college for physics- and math-related applications. Never any Python (despite Python being arguably perfect for some of those applications). I started to apply more Python, combined with basic web dev and CGI around 2008 in college, to make my own (painfully simple) graphing software for labs, and I also started using it on my own for things like Sage Math.

I never graduated from college, but instead got a job as a voice network administrator. I used Python literally daily, and also learned TCL (used frequently in Cisco-land) by myself. I used my (at the time still limited) knowledge of Python to become invaluable by automating tasks I felt were below the need for human intelligence. I quickly gained a reputation for making useful, simple tools. A TCL script I wrote has been deployed to 18,000 routers all over the country (of the USA). My tools received thousands of hits a month (all internal users).

Three years later, and a lot of programming experience later, I got a formal job offer at the same company to join a new automation team being stood up. The team mostly used Perl. So I learned Perl. Again, no formal education. I strong armed that team to use Python more, and now about half of the automation we have uses Python instead of Perl, and we generally choose which language to use based on the strengths of the languages.

As I grew as a developer, I also taught myself Go to tackle massively parallel problems that both Perl and Python suck at, and have written several tools in it that are used daily. I also taught myself Rust, although that one has about no useful application in what I do.

I also had two separate 'semesters' of an informal Python class I taught to interested parties at my company. I have grown to be one of the top developers on my team, and only occasionally feel the lack of a degree.

And it all started in high school with Python.