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It's coding, it just isn't professional software engineering.

The first non-toy program I ever wrote was in BASIC, on ZX Spectrum 48, and although I don't have it anymore, I remember it was one of the shittiest, most atrocious examples of spaghetti code that I've ever seen in my life.

Everyone starts somewhere.

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How exactly do people think those of us who are self-taught got started?

I was picking apart other peoples' javascript to see how it worked years before I was taught anything about coding in a formal setting.

Pretty much this. My first programming experience was going through books/forums and copy-pasting stuff. It wasn't until years later that I cared to know how to create an actual project with an IDE.

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