Comment by TacticalCoder

> I had to read books

Same here. Except that as native french speaker there simply weren't that many quality books about programming/computers that I could easily find in french.

So at 11 years old I also learned english, by myself, by using computers (which were in english back then) and by reading computer books.

And we'd exchange tips with other kids in the neighborhood who also had computers and were also learning to code (like my neighbors who eventually, 20 years later, created a software startup in SoCal).