I work at a small startup called www.venuemonk.com where I was solo coder (CTO) till a few months back. It was due to a variety of reasons that I ended up learning coding in node js and learned a plethora of coding concepts and techniques.
I start my workday at around 10:00 AM and end it around 10:30 PM or so. I usually have a few periods of talk and lunch time with colleagues and thinking on product decisions with other founders.
I used to code in college to solve math problems or code websites for fun and freelance. I learned a few things in and out for hacking and productivity like python scripts etc. I ended up learning in a more productive manner when I started up. I had a lot of help from friends in college to set me up with tools and guides to learn. Clear my doubts in the early stage, even now I catch up my doubts from day to day progress or bugs.
I am a technical founder in the team and product guy. I end up being called for all startup tech-events or product launch events. It is fun to hangout at meetups and learn new things. I always try to know enough to know what is relevant for work and what is just fun to know. It is tempting to try new things out for work but it needs a more rigorous thinking to implement.
Be fearless and focus on having a group of motivated people to cheer you on.
Thanks so much for replying, your website venuemonk.com looks amazing! Very nice presentation and layout, 100% responsive, and it's easy to filter down the results to what you need :D I just got married last year and I wish we had something like this where we live to help us find venues. And I'm also vegetarian so I appreciate how accommodating the design is for displaying that information :)