As a general rule, if working as an employee, try to avoid large corporations. Working there sucks anyways, and they won't hire you (and pay you good money) without a degree. Look for small companies that are looking for sharp individuals. Anything under 5-10 ppl is good, if they are more than 15-20 they're probably already loose the edge.
You could also be bold and be independentish, but that's much riskier, and is hard without some family background.
The best thing to do at this age, if possible is to go to a regular University and get a degree. Even if you go to school, get a job for the experience. The best way to learn programming is to learn from other experienced programmers who review your code, you review their code, ask them what they think of technology-X, etc. You don't get that at school. While at H.S. I took some courses (e.g. UNIX, C) at the local comm. college, and it retrospect they were pretty low-level, so as a rule of thumb don't count on getting anything worthwhile out of there.
You could also be bold and be independentish, but that's much riskier, and is hard without some family background.
The best thing to do at this age, if possible is to go to a regular University and get a degree. Even if you go to school, get a job for the experience. The best way to learn programming is to learn from other experienced programmers who review your code, you review their code, ask them what they think of technology-X, etc. You don't get that at school. While at H.S. I took some courses (e.g. UNIX, C) at the local comm. college, and it retrospect they were pretty low-level, so as a rule of thumb don't count on getting anything worthwhile out of there.