How much experience/education/self-study did you have before you got your first coding job?

I was in uni for little over a year (with hardly any prior programming knowledge) before I got a job as a parttime Java dev :D Apart from uni I did have some experience from a bunch of side projects I did. I do feel like my case is more exception than rule though ^^

We hire straight off of university of the candidate has a very good degree. That's actually the ideal scenario for us.

I taught myself web design, html, JavaScript & css for little over a year in the evenings. Before getting my 1st job. I was shit and slow but learnt 1000% more there than i did on my own.