I'm autistic. I'm also self-taught. Those two things interact in ways that are sometimes genuinely useful and sometimes absolutely not, and I think it's worth writing about because nobody really talks about what it's actually like.
The hyperfocus thing is real
When I'm interested in something, I can go extremely deep on it extremely fast. Like, properly lost-track-of-time, forgot-to-eat, what-do-you-mean-it's-3am deep. For coding this is often an advantage — I can get into a flow state on a problem and just not come up for air until it's solved. That kind of focus is hard to manufacture if you don't have it naturally.
Pattern recognition
A lot of coding is pattern recognition — seeing the structure in something, noticing what's similar to something you've seen before, understanding how systems fit together. My brain does that pretty naturally. I can look at an unfamiliar codebase and get a feel for how it works fairly quickly, which is useful when you're working across a lot of different stacks.
The environment stuff matters a lot
I do my best work in a specific set of conditions — right setup, right environment, minimal interruptions. When those conditions aren't met, everything is harder. This is one of the reasons I've put so much effort into my actual setup. It's not just aesthetics; it genuinely affects how well I can work.
The communication side
I'm selectively mute, which means in certain situations or under certain kinds of stress, speaking just doesn't happen. It's not a choice, it's just how it is. Online and in writing I'm completely fine — this whole blog exists because writing is easy for me. In person, in the wrong context, not so much.
Honestly, the internet and coding have been a big part of why this hasn't been more limiting. Most of what I do can be done entirely in text. Most of the people I collaborate with I've never spoken to out loud.
It's not all upside
I'm not trying to make this sound like being autistic is just a collection of superpowers. It's not. There are things that are genuinely harder, situations that are genuinely draining, systems that just aren't designed with how my brain works in mind. The school situation is a pretty good example of what happens when those systems fail.
But coding specifically has always been one of the things that just clicks. The logic of it, the way you build something from nothing, the satisfaction of something working — it's a good fit. And I'm glad I found it.