With regards to the ASP.NET stack, it's not really that different from learning any other web stack. You can do Python, but you'll learn Django, Jinja templating, SQL, (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript (jQuery, Bootstrap), etc. Or you could do Java and it's the same again, but different.

Obviously won't be able to learn "all" of it straight off the bat, but don't despair, just pick a stack and make a hello world and then keep going. There's a ton of tutorials out there for whatever you choose, and you can get something half decent up and running in a few days, easy.

Having just completed a comp sci degree, I'm of the opinion that it was time very well spent. I'd been learning programming in my own time for some years, but doing hard theory courses at uni was an eye opening experience, and it's taught me things that I would never have learned on my own.

I don't think you *should* get a BS, but if you do get one and put your head down you will be rewarded with a lot of good knowledge. It's expensive, and all the information is available in other forms (i.e just buy the books), but the structured learning environment is a big plus.

Any learning you do in your own time is definitely time well spent. Regardless of what you do, you should get yourself some good books. Get a Java book (or whatever language you prefer), and if you're keen, get books on algorithms and operating systems to formally present some important programming concepts.

That quote re: Babbage is sobering!

I want to try it out but haven't had the dollars to throw at it. I figure I'll wait until it drops again, no big rush.

In the meantime, I just picked up BF3 for $5!

scanf() doesn't consume the '\n' character, so the next function that reads input from stdin will. I never use scanf() for anything.

My practise is to read a line like this:

// read LINE_LENGTH characters from stdin, store in line
fgets(line, LINE_LENGTH, stdin);
// consume the rest of the input until a '\n' character is found
while(getc() != '\n') {}
// now parse line, maybe using sscanf, or your own custom string-to-whatever function
sscanf(line, "%s", myvar);

I'm a bit rusty actually, it's been a while! o.O