There's lots of paths. Self-taught is the hardest, longest, path, but over time it will pay off in some ways as you will have learned how to fix anything.
There's a way of thinking that you need to be indoctrinated to. Really get a feel for thinking this way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box It's fundamental to thinking like an engineer. All systems can be broken down into a series of black boxes. So when you are programming you are just working on a box at a time, no matter the size of a program or system. The entire ecosystem (OS) of a program can be thought of this way as well.
When you think this way you are "chunking" the problem. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29)
The worries of being self-taught can be justified in that your are missing out on the "culture" of the tool-builders (the compiler writers, the framework creators, etc.) The other aspect, is you don't know what you don't know. Successfully completing projects probably is the best help here. There's always things to learn.