Road to software engineering

[Ev0lution]

Hello everyone,i just joined your community, and started learning c++ recently, i really like the language it seems very interesting.Well, my goal is said in the title, one day i would like to work as a software engineer, what i want to ask is how could i get some exp in creating software, like some tuts with explanations so i could get a small understanding of what am i supposed to do..so im kinda familiar with the basics(classes, data types, data members/functions etc etc..well the very basics).I don't have any univeristy degree, i'm self taught..my 1st language was ruby tho(skipped to ruby on rails after learned the ruby basics) i used it for a over a year.Hence , my desire to learn all there is to that language(yeah i'm very straight forwarded), so can you people please tell me from your own experience what road should i take to software engineering, how you got from 0 to where you are right now(how was it? are you satisfied with the C++ knowledge you got over the years, or would you have prefered to use that time on some other language?are you the same sane person you were when you started studying IT?).So i really hope i will get a good anwser :) .