Probably wont help you, but here is the condensed version for me. Born in the early 80s. First home computer mid 90s. I “liked” computers. Took desktop publishing in high school (photoshop, basic design, art classes), worked summers for a photographer doing digital alterations and mock ups. Started university and majored in business, minor CS after a friend told me If I took CS101 intro to programming that he could get me a gig working nights with him. Learned PHP 3 and how to make incredibly insecure web admin stuff and sql. Graduation, worked insurance, investment advisor, construction, and also was a math teacher. All the while, I did some side projects with php/mysql. Lost my teaching gig and put out a tech resume through a recruiter and managed to impress one company to bring me on as a developer. Been doing that since (over a decade), taking on greater responsibility and having a few amazing mentors.

Most of my portfolio at the time I started real dev work was tools to help in the classroom and a few sites made for very small businesses. I didn’t know about source control, unit tests, any of that. I could parse form data and get data in and out of mysql. Somehow I learned proper schema design and enough html/css/js for “dhtml” that I was worth taking a risk on. Probably some books I had read