I'm self-teaching in my late 20s after dropping out of a philosophy degree several times in a row. I hope you'll permit me to rant a bit, it's related to your comment and the article: the sheer amount of jank is absolutely unbelievable. The vast majority of it is written with selfish careerism in mind, not generous pedagogy. Much of it is vapourware advertisement for a paid course. Plenty of it ends up on the front page here nowadays which is a bit of a shame. Related: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

I've wasted about 6 months on distractions from following fashions and persuasive writing/videos, and now know a little bit of a bunch of popular languages and some CS and IT and already feel a bit burned out (as I'm stretched in so many directions - sorry for the mixed metaphor!).

In the past couple of weeks I've nuked my windows installation and have an Arch+i3 setup where I try to use CLI wherever I can. I've limited myself to following CS61A (the famous SICP course), HtDP, and I leaf through a book I have on Rust, typing out examples and steeping my brain in healthy confusion. The difference in my rate of learning is astounding: not because I'm suddenly better at research, but because I'm better at filtering. What an age to live in!