I'm completely self taught, actually. I'm 25 next week. I made my first website when I was 7 and it was about Pokemon. x'D!! When I was 15, I ran a tiny handful of Yugioh-related sites and fanlistings. When I was 19 I discovered WAMP and since then I've been working with building forums and such. I really had no idea what I was doing when it came to PHP, however, until recently. Everything I've learned about PHP I've learned in the past year, everything I know about jQuery/Javascript I've learned in the past year and a half. Before working with these coding languages I did work with Actionscript inside of Flash -- so I understood the basics of coding. As for teaching yourself --
Codecademy is a great place to start. If you're more of a book person, you're in luck: Amazon has a ton of used books to do with coding -- often times they're books that are now outdated requirements for college courses that are in such a surplus they just won't sell -- we're talking less than $5 for a book that's only a year or two out of date! While I'm self taught, I do have a whole bookshelf dedicated to code. I recommend first teaching yourself, and THEN taking a course -- if only because I've seen friends of mine online end up dropping out from stress. If something isn't fun, you're only going to struggle with it. Make it fun. Make it your friend.
