1. Nope. However, is extremely helpful for certain situations.
2. Nope. I have a few programmer buddies who are entirely self-taught. One even majored in modern dance at university.
3. Yep. ASM could drive some people to suicide. On the other hand, there's COBOL. You could write an essay on the algorithm you wish to implement and have a slight chance that it might compile.

Hope this helps.

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1