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Don't be too depressed. I've been programming in some measure since I was ~4, and I'm 23 now. Many of those years were me slowly teaching myself, because I had no mentors.

It's really not about time, it's about projects and people. You learn by doing, not by time spent. Don't worry about it.

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Good point.

I've been programming since the age of 9, and I'm well into my 40s.

What that statement doesn't say is that for some of those years I learned very little (even though I was spending some of that time coding, I wasn't really "doing" anything; I.e., wasn't learning).

What really matters is doing quality work, making quality mistakes (so to speak), and learning from that and from other good engineers around you.

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