Glad you wrote this. I am going on 15 years of being self taught and constantly trying to learn more. I've built a whole lot in that time, but nothing has ever seen the light of day and I've never* done anything with it professionally. After much hesitation, I recently pulled the trigger and signed up for an upcoming Startup Weekend event. The hesitation comes from the thought that I will be light-years behind everyone else there, and basically won't be able to contribute at their level. This give me some confidence that I won't be a total drag on some team.
* OK not entirely true - I'm in finance, and I do quite a bit with Excel VBA - but I don't really count that as real programming, although it has served me well in my field
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for reading. I've always found most people at hackathons seem to be super friendly and willing to help out. The last hackathon I was at (Mozilla YVR) there were a few people there just writing HTML and CSS and tagging along on other projects learning and helping out. It's just an awesome community. Best of luck with Startup Weekend.
* OK not entirely true - I'm in finance, and I do quite a bit with Excel VBA - but I don't really count that as real programming, although it has served me well in my field