I think the "hype" part of it comes from treating it like it could be learned overnight or just from a single book. Programming and software building take a wide set of skills and knowledge to complete but there are many levels you could attain. See "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Consider putting an interactive copy of your VC online that is built in the technologies you know. Mine is on Github using "GitHub Pages" but a Heroku site or self-hosted is great as long as you have some place they can review your code. Build it using a nice mix of the technology, use the best practices you know. As as you learn more, polish it to use better and better practices. That way when people are looking at your resume they are also looking at what you know how to build.

BASIC on my Atari 800. After 10 PRINT "STUFF"; 20 GOTO 10 I made a nice program that animated a birthday message.

In 3rd grade they showed us some "experimental" computers that I believe were Texas Instruments machines. But the first OS I used at home was an Atari 800. This was followed by Apple ][, then eventually DOS and Windows. Was many years until OSX was invented which is my current :D