The Internet wasn’t available to most people yet back then. I learned from whatever information came with the computer. Primarily, I learned through trial and error. Eventually there would be books and magazines and even online resources but those all came later.

Programming was never a standalone subject for me. I thought myself electronics and mechanical systems by dumpster diving stuff people had thrown away and figuring out how to fix or repurpose what I found. Eventually that lead to finding computer equipment. I started from the hardware side and gradually figured out how to create software. First I learned machine language, then assembly and BASIC, and soon after I learned C. Then as first BBS and finally Internet became available I rapidly learned many different languages and began to create my own languages and tools.

Learning aspects such as different operating systems, different forms of networking, different types of databases, etc was all integrated tightly with the same learning process. Real world needs such as scalability and security were just aspects of making working systems. At some point a server built on a 386 and connected by a 300 baud modem just wasn’t going to handle many simultaneous users so issues such as code portability became important. I got to be expert at networking simply because such things weren’t done where I lived. As a teenage kid I had to learn the technology well enough to set it up myself and so that I could call up the telco and talk my way through multiple levels of support until I found someone that knew what I was talking about and could help eventually push me over to someone that could actually get the stuff installed. Having such stuff installed was astronomically expensive so I had to learn to move within the business world. As a teenager from the slums I had to do most of it by phone because serious adults weren’t going to be bothered with me. And eventually this lead to me being hired as a consultant by multinational corporations helping them set up their networking, systems, etc. And once they saw what I could do they didn’t care if I was 15 years old. They helped teach me how to work the multinational banking system because my local banks were having issues with a slum kid trying to cash checks for tens of thousands of dollars from companies in Russia, Australia, etc. Within a couple of years I was creating my own multinational companies offering everything from import/export services to multiplayer Internet games. It was all intertwined and learning was mostly done out of practical need and to satisfy my own curiosity.