Thanks Ant. And everyone else. Yeah, best thing I did was apply for the part time degree. Was starting to think I wasn't getting anywhere doing it on my own.
Just need to pass some security checks then I'll be a software engineer :D
Now the hard bit, learning all the industry specific jargon and working out what it really means. For instance you will no longer be able to hide a 'back door' in your code, from now on you'll have to call it a 'boot'.