Programming wasn't available at school so my next chance to get my feet wet was on my final year Physics degree project. With a few math projects in FORTRAN along the way :-/
So given that my skillset was pretty much BASIC only at this point I took one look at C in 1995 as I graduated and balked. Pointers? WTF? I am never doing that ever. Programming ain't for me. Just not that smart I guess.
In reality I did a lot of early web programming, I just never thought of HTML and very early javascript as being programming. I'd build the occasional page or two myself with HTML JS CSS in the intervening years.
But it wasn't till 2010 and I was having technical co-founder issues for the second time in back-to-back startups (not his fault, visa issues with a family member), when I realized I needed to be my own technical co-founder.
Ruby! WTF? Nothing like that old C that scared me away. I can do this! Thanks to Ruby-on-Rails, Stack Overflow, a ton of great web blogs and Hacker News here I am a few years later able to get paid for programming for other people while I build my own MVP and first iteration of product for my own startup. Am I as good as the folks I'll end up bringing on board if it takes off - hell no, a great programmer is light years ahead of me.
However, if a muppet like me can do it, you can to.
Great article!