ctseng01

You took the AP CS, and knew you could get an A+, why do you think you suck at programming?

Being able to program is a wonderful skill - the computers are so accurate, so efficient and never complains once you get all the bugs out. It's great. The languages are getting easier and more powerful. I think the world will soon just have 2 groups of people - people who program or make things, and people who don't.

In short, programming is a great career to start. You don't have to be an amazing programmer to appreciate it's beauty and value. Yes, it may be stressful, hey, even jobs at Starbucks or the Amazon warehouse get stressful - if you work at (any job) loser companies, you also lose your job easily when the bossmen screw up. If I am to choose an easily, portable skill to harness, programming is better than box-packing or coffee-pouring.

Try Coursera.org - the classes are of decent quality, even the free ones are really, really good. Make yourself do it. I only completed half of the classes I signed up, but that's better than nothing....

You need to pick a project you feel passionate about, find a small piece of paid work, or find a friend in need of getting a project done to push yourself through. I also found looking at other people's DEV work being helpful, too, granted that the developer is willing to share and explain.

After being on your own for 8 years, do you really want to leave your career in another person's hand? The corporate jobs really aren't as safe as 8~10 years ago. People get laid off all the time from their corporate jobs.

I hope that it gives you comfort in knowing the corporate people have a lot of fear going the other direction, too.

You survived on your own for 8 years, that should give you a lot of confidence. You have done Bus Dev, you can sell yourself in a job hunt; you have learned web development w/o a college degree, you can learn JS and PHP - the languages and DEV platform are getting easier and easier.