Good article. I've had very similar experiences looking over my old code from several months ago. Even basic concepts like procedural abstraction I've only learned about and put into practice recently; in the past I may have used it but wasn't consciously aware of it and didn't do it consistently. And yet I was able to write a lot of awesome working software (that was hard to read and maintain).

Sometimes I think I would have been better off with a little theory at first, but then I wonder if I would have even developed the passion without the immediate joy of creation.