Along the way you will definitely learn what you need to, and it should be a fun and rewarding journey. Using the free resources available on the internet, you may also pick up quite a bit of CS fundamentals and theory along the way, as well as see their practical application. When you show these hobby projects to potential future employers, your passion and motivation will definitely stand out, no matter how amateur the final result actually turned out.
It is scary to stray from the standard curriculum, and wing it. Who knows how things will turn out, what if you are doing things the "wrong" way, and you won't even have a piece of paper to show for it at the end. But that really is the most important difference between someone starting at age 12, and someone starting at 25 - the freedom to explore.