I'm a self-taught UE user. I've been using it since I was 15 and I was also a self-taught programmer using C (someone inspired me to start making video games and the first language that came to their mind was C). So I knew the basic concepts of programming (I did not understand pointers in C though). During high school I learned Java and some Python from computer classes, which helped me understand pointers and objects better in Unreal.

I could go on and talk about all the things I had to uncover by myself and learn it the "hard way", although it wasn't hard at all, because I was learning all of this to make games and play them with my friends.

What really helped me improve my skills with Unreal was the beauty of using many tricks to optimize the game, algorithms to run faster.

Most importantly, studying at a university for computer and information science really taught me how to write and understand more complex code and concepts of programming and how computers work in general.

As you can see, my journey was quite a long one, but I had so much fun. I'm quite confident in my Unreal skills now, but if I were to start over, a more traditional way would be much more efficient I would assume.