I taught myself. I spent a ton of time building software/apps for myself to show my skills before I could bring that portfolio to anyone and have them be willing to pay me. I took my first project at way under market rate. It took me 2 years from no coding knowledge at all to getting paid. I had other jobs in between so that will not be accurate for others. I was able to generate revenue pretty shortly after I put my mind to it. My first gig was building an HTML5 iPad interactive for a museum.