No worries for not adhering to the structure, it was just there because I wanted to urge more than "Yes"/"No" replies, I enjoyed reading your post. Very cool story.

I'm self taught at the moment, about to go to a dev bootcamp to really solidify my understanding of web-centric ideas (most of my stuff has been data crunching). Glad to see that so many people are happy in the field without a CS degree.