I guess it depends on what you are trying to build, but there are lots of APIs out there to help integrate lightning into your applications.
https://lightningdevkit.org/ might be a good place to start.
How did you go getting a job being self taught? I see most jobs want the bit of paper for the “qualification “
reply
There are actually many jobs that do not require a degree to be qualified, especially in the bitcoin space. A good resource is bitcoinerjobs.com.
I cover ways to make yourself stand out in the guide, like contributing to open source projects for example.
reply