I couldn't think of anything to say after reading your post, but this picture helped me think of what to say:
Being taught = fail.
Learning out of your own motivation and desires = success.
Self Taught Programmers > School taught Programmers
Some of us may not know the context as well as those who went to school for it, but we have more ability, and "web smarts" as it were. Whereas they are simply ebook savvy
. Teaching yourself accounts for experience, learning from others doesn't.
So, simply open up your friendly neighborhood Google, type in what you wanna know, and don't do anything else till you know it.
BTW: Those "programmers" are not people you hear about. You only hear about developers. Programmers are not generally in the spot light. Programmers can be very focused, or very diverse. It doesn't matter. If you know what you wanna know, and you can apply it, that's all that matters.