This is a good question because I glossed a lot.

I wrote a loooong reply. Too long. So, as the kids say, TL;DR: I'm self-taught at the sacrifice of tons of personal/free time, and then working in jobs where I could apply Perl here and there even though I was not paid to program. I had a background and aptitude for CS and math from childhood so it's not a miracle, :P just a lot of effort.

The monastery helped me get out of many bad habits and break out of the Dunning–Kruger stage of my hacking skills. :P