I know a guy like you who had to work so hard in class, we called him names because of how bad he was at coding. Somehow we ended up great friends. Now it's 10 years later. The guy is a contract Scala programmer and bills $100 an hour and is generally one of the best programmers at the companies he contracts for. Not big four, but regular bread and butter companies that build their own software. He got to where he is by not drinking in his 20s and by studying software before work an hour every single day. He even has a wife and young child... we are 30 btw