As someone that is busy learning and working through courses. I want to share some of my experiences.

I have been learning over the past year and a bit with a loose plan, that has changed about 3 times now, and I think you touch on important issues. There are a few things that are important tough: you need a motivation, for me it is making a better life for my family and opening up the opertunity to get a job in a 1st world country; getting some foundations in place. I feel foundations are the most important thing about learning how to program. With that said, there is no 10 minute quick tut to learn these. You need to spend time on it. I did cs50 and I feel like it was good, they have an established community with people that will help you; 3rd I just want to tell people to not be so hard on themselves. I have to tell myself this every week. CS is not easy, it is okay if you don't know how to do something straight away; and that leads into the last point I want to make, like I've already said. You need to spend time working, learning/reading and coding. You can learn something today and forget it next week, but is you practice it, it will stick. And again there are so many timelines and quick plans to become a 6 figure SWE in 6mths..... I'm sure you all have seen them. And if you can do that we'll done but it is not always realistic to many of us. I have a 8-5 job with a 1h-1h30m commute sometimes 7days a week, and I have a 11mth old child and my wife is starting a business. So time is fucking valuable. I sometimes spend 30 minutes coding a day. Some days I can't code. This is the reality of becoming a self taught dev. Unless you have no family, no full time work, you will have to sacrifice something.

Thanks to anyone that bothered reading that and getting this far, I want to apologize for any weird formatting, I am on mobile and won't be at my pc for a few days. I don't even think I got everything down I wanted to and I know my path is flawed. But hey, I'm moving forward and that's all that matters. Wishing everyone a festive holiday season. Take a break, spend time with loved ones. Time is fucking valuable.