I started programming in BASIC on the Commodore 64 mid 80s, and went from there to C/C++, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, Perl, C#, Java etc. I've never studied CS, I actually started working right after primary school, and have worked ever since.

I'll leave it to others to decide if I'm a good programmer, but at least I've never been unemployed, so I guess that means something, maybe that employers are desperate. :)