I read your piece with mixed feelings, I felt some kind of frustration. Then I thought for a bit and realized what I actually felt was jealousy and a bit of insecurity. After I recognized this it took me less than a minute to dismiss them completely - I'm not a cheerful person and I can't say I was really "happy for you", but what I wanted to write as a comment at that point was something in the lines of "good job".

Then I read the comments. Then went to work. Then read some more comments after I came back.

And what I want to write now would consist of profanities, wild swearing and all expressions of despise I could find. Not directed at you, obviously but at all the people who write complete and utter bullshit like the one who calls himself a programmer JUST BECAUSE of a few years in school or another one who thinks you'll be "a nightmare and time-suck for coworkers". I have no words for the ones like them, and it's not because English is my second language (it is ofc). And I'm scared shitless that, had I not take a couple of minutes to think, I could write something similar.

Well, obviously, you did... I'm not a cheerful, empathic person. You did ok, and you know it - you're employed and you do what you like. You don't need me to tell you that. Instead, I'll try to explain to you why those people wrote those poisonous comments, or, at least, what was it that almost made me write something similar.

1) I started programming at the age of 10 and got my first job in the field some twelve years later. Not because of lack of opportunity, there were chances. I was shy, I was uncertain of my skills (think 16+, obviously not earlier), I wasted time hesitating. From 10 to 16 years of age there were six summer holidays, which amounts to almost twelve months of programming (which is understatement - what with winter holidays and programming after school and all), so at least double the time you spent. And I wasted another six years before I finally gathered up the courage and actually applied somewhere (I got hired right off the bat). To put it simply: I'm jealous. You did what I could have done but didn't. I think there is still, almost ten years later, some regret in me that I didn't. Your post touched that regret and almost caused me to be mindlessly aggressive as some of the other commentator. I think this is a motivation for some of them.

2) The one who wrote that 'he studied 5 years at university' has similar reasons to the one stated above. It's just regret mixed with anger. The truth is he knows what these years gave him (at least if he's active as a professional developer now) and is bitter about this. This one is easy for me to spot, because I see it in people when they (sometimes after years of successful cooperation!) find out that I dropped out fairly quickly and never got my degree. It's funny, because I have never heard such complaints from people who had some social life during college. In short: they know they wasted they time, or alternatively, they know that they're not cut out to be programmers if they couldn't become one without collage. And for the record - don't be intimidated, please. "Compilers, networks, databases, concurrent programming" - you'll learn all of this if you want, it's not some arcane magic, really, you're perfectly able to learn most of those things on your own. Your post, your success in just six months shows this. They couldn't do this if their lives depended on it, and that's why they're angry. [It (the former case, of regretting time spent in college) applies equally to me, but in a weird way: maybe I could be an entirely self-taught programmer, but I'm not, and this angers me. If only I knew better than to go to college, waste time and money, and instead just programmed more! But no, I had to take those few years and now I hear sometimes that "well, imagine how much better you'd be if you graduated" or "anything you know is because of your education, it's a pity you dropped out"...]

3) In this profession, if you want to be serious about it, it's absolutely not about how much you know at any given point, it's about how quickly and efficiently you accumulate knowledge. Many people take for granted that after some time speed of knowledge acquisition drops, but they should know better. It's not a law, it's just their laziness. What you did in half a year is not impressive for the ones ahead of you - I mean what you can do now, what skills you have now. But if you keep it up... if you'll stay as passionate as you are for a few years more... Yeah, I can see that: hordes of programmers (consciously or not) afraid of you. Programmers who haven't learned anything new since last year. Programmers who learn, but slowly. Programmers who are not giving their best. That's why I wrote about insecurity at the beginning, that's what I briefly felt, until I realized I have better things to do than worry about this - writing this small Erlang pet project for example. Remember that if you keep at it you will upset many people, those who stopped learning, those who stagnated, but it's not your fault they're lazy!

Well, I just realized that I wrote an awful lot of text, most of which is my own introspection and, partially, projection. I did it probably because I'm not a cheerful person and this is the simplest way for me to tell you: "good job, keep at it". Ignore negative comments, in such cases as yours they tell much more about their authors than about what you did.

And you know what you did, you don't need me to tell you that, so I'll just end this here.