My skills probably don't align with what people need

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I've written some programs in the past, like the SMB3 Map Editor, and more recently I've been working on a range_map container class template in C++, which stores ranges, rather than just single points, using a variant rb-tree system. It's been an interesting project, and it's neat to have to learn how container class templates use things like allocators behind the scenes.

But it takes me a long time to write programs, and I always work very much at my own pace, and can't seem to move faster than that. Also, I recently filled out an application for a programming internship at a company that provides sex reassignment surgery and is located where my uncle works, but the things they asked what you had experience on I never even heard of.

It looks like this is one hobby, in which my skills will not match up with those needed by an employer.

Could you take commissions/free lance jobs? You can (usually?) work at your own pace.

I checked. They all want like web developers and stuff, which I haven't really done.

Try learning C# or Java. This is very easy if you already know C or C++. Both of the aforementioned languages will enable you to write code fairly quickly, without having to f*ck around with memory management, pointers and stuff like that. While C# isn't as popular as Java yet, the followers are rapidly growing in numbers, and it's definetely part of the future.

You can use JavaScript and PHP for that. http://www.codecademy.com/ has interactive tutorials for that.

You might try Ruby, or Python. Both have extremely friendly and helpful communities, are great for the web, and are employable. I would steer clear of PHP if I were you. It lacks philosophy.

As far as web programming goes, avoid PHP like a disease it is about to go extinct, research Javascript and Node.js and learn that. This is somewhat new, and it runs Javascript on both the server side and the browser/client side. The exact same Javascript engine as runs within Chrome (Google "v8" Javascript engine) runs on the server side, everything is just as event-oriented and asynchronous as it is in a browser, which is a HUGE plus. That way, you don't have to "switch gears" like you would with PHP on the server side, and Javascript (the only REAL choice) on browser-side. Everything connects up much more predictably and there are no issues with data types being different, and they even have this thing called Angular which lets you 'bind' data on both sides, so you almost don't even have to do any of what I'd call "heavy lifting" (wiring up the XHR/Ajax requests, getting PHP to output some sort of structure that Javascript will consume without indigestion, debugging both sides, usually simultaneously and awkwardly... stuff that just wastes your time when you could be actually creating something). Node.js is as close to Legos as anything I've ever used, and I've been wishing for something really viable like that forever. My company discovered it and finally took it seriously about 2 months ago and we have ended all future developments using PHP, and even are porting all our current systems and code over to Node.js... yes it is THAT good.

Previous to now, you could have called me a PHP evangelist, but no longer. Previous to PHP my favorite was Perl, and my least favorite language is Python. I have been coding professionally for around 18 years, and as a hobby previous to that since I can remember (maybe 27 years total? since I was 10 years old or so, BASIC and then later on 6502 assembly, on a Commodore 64). Just so you know I'm not just hating on PHP on an ill-informed whim.