Teaching yourself is great! I've taken almost a dozen online courses and am taking more now (along with my full-load of grad school coursework and my research). I am mostly self-taught with programming/computer science. But sometimes you hit a wall and can't move past it, just as I'm sure you do if you DO have a CS background. That's when I come to online forums. My wall is just more basic than others. In my research, I learn more bouncing ideas off of colleagues than sitting with a book. I'd definitely love if when someone gave an answer to a problem, they said where to learn more.

Just to clarify, yes, I'm missing MANY fundamentals. It's frustrating, since I can't just go back to school for Computer Science to fill it in. Do you feel the prompts when you go to comment/answer are sufficient? Does anyone even read them? Perhaps a simple addition to it or change of wording might help?

I understand how hard it can be to answer questions. I have tutored, taught small classes, etc. I know how annoying those people are who ask the same question over an over (or ask a question that has JUST been answered). I'm pretty meticulous when I ask questions. Most people aren't that way. One thing I LOVE about this site is that when I enter a question in the subject line, it looks for similar posts (I assume most people don't do that in advance...I do). Maybe it would behoove us to include some common things left out of posts as a prompt: "Things to include"? Great points!