About a year and a half ago, I lost my fun-but-low-skill receptionist job. Deciding I was tired of being poor and having no marketable skills, I began to teach myself to program, which involved a bunch of Coursera courses, an internship, and a TAship at an intensive code school. Tomorrow will mark a month at my first Real Job as a programmer (indeed, the first Real Job of my life.)

The process has involved the acquisition of non-computer skills, too. In particular, I've gotten better at estimating my own competence, accounting for the planning fallacy, asking for help, doing distasteful tasks, and calmly articulating differences of opinion (and corrections of fact).