@Robbie if I understand correctly you are about 15 years old, and you are out here to learn and looking at your possible future. If that's so it's great.

I don't give you advices, but I can answer (some) questions and I can share about what I've seen so far.

(This is a public post, anyone feel free to comment, by the way.)

So, I posted #newhere (again 😀) but skipped the (re)introduction. A short intro about me (or you can check the world of knowledge).

Kind of intro

I'm Hungarian and working with computers. But let me tell you how it went, since it's more relevant for you right now.
When I was a kid I met with my first computer, and I loved that it's a machine that does whan I tell it, and tried to write programs, which I still do. Apart from that I went through various computers until I met my true friend, the C=64. I have played a lot of games, and in parallel I did programming, so I was curious how the games worked, so learnt (by myself) assembly, and started to take programs apart, like cutting out and repacking music. 😀

Also, I learned English because of the text adventure games, so I had a notepad with the words I don't know, and a dictionary, and I wrote the meaning, and after a while I kind of remembered them. I remember most of them even now so people believe I speak English but in reality I only play a text-based adventure where they are the NPCs. 😀

Then I met a real programming language (apart from assembly and BASIC) and it looked weird, and I was curious so learned C. For fun.

Then come the IBM PC age, and in my school there was a computer, which was even faster, so started playing games there (Larry, I'm looking at you!), which was pretty useful for learning more English. But then these machines had even more interesting programming languages (like Pascal, but fun was to check Forth, Prolog and Smalltalk), so half of my time was spent programming, creating various little fun stuff ranging from simple drawing program to simple games.

There was no internet, but I met the first modem and I was also hooked by the possibility to connect remote machines and transfer data (games!) so I spent some more money on modems, which lead to creating my first open online free community resource: a BBS. There it went on: I virtually met a lot of nice people, met a lot of intersting programs (shareware, freeware), I knew a bit English, I knew a bit programming... I wasn't bored.

And it have determined me to learn the stuff I loved to do, which was about computers, interconnects, programming... so I went to college learning about just that. (It was not an easy ride, but that's another story, and Hungarian education used to be free back then, so I didn't have to generate debts.) And college wasn't an university so I got a lot of useful knowledge apart from theory.

Then I got some whatever job, mainly to cover my hobbies. So I ran my BBS, and then Internet came, so it was just logical to create an ISP using those modems. And meeting new people (and hanging on iRC a lot, and talking with everybody). And it leads to new friends, some of them asking me to join their companies, do new jobs, larger scale, more money, more interesting tasks, larger stuff, faster stuff, .... and it just goes on and forward.

In the meantime (apart from the work where I do what I like) I meet people introducing me to new hobbies. And I find new projects on the internet. Like, I found google before it was Google and was amazed by the idea of the ranking, or created part of DMoz just because I wanted to share. And then I happened to find the English #Wikipedia and thought it would be nice to have a Hungarian one so I have created it. And it grew pretty big today (both English and Hungarian). And I met again a huge lot of people through all these hobbies. And some of them became jobs.

Or, I like to bike, and I found a nice map project, also free and open, so I started to edit OSM. And it grew as well, and I meet a lof of people through that hobby project, where I give away my work for free. Some of them asking for my knowledge and willing to pay for that.

You see, all the jobs I get paid for are based on stuff I gave away for free. And the people I met through it. And that people have seen what I can so and asked me to do that for them for money. It worked out pretty well. Giving away stuff for free I mean. 😀

Moral of the story? Learn. Be open. Talk to smart and worthy people (and do not waste too much time on the stupid and no-good ones). They may find what you can do worthy.