I have a little bit similar, just not so sad story.

I was ~12 years old (around 2004), I really wanted to learn programming but all I had was a cell phone (one of the first budget class phones with GPRS, Nokia 3510i). I had very little access to internet / pc (about 30min/week) and couldn't speak English, Russian, or any other major language.

So I tried to get my hands on any PHP code examples, type it in using my phone, and upload to FTP using some online forms.

Eh, funny times. I wrote a bit more about it http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2013/07/30/writing-code-with-a-ce...