As I've decided to learn how to program, and what language I want to
learn (C), I'm now left with a BIG question. Do I need to learn computer
theory? I've seen many posts on this forum by people who have taught themselves with books, tutorials, and
much hard work. This will have to be the way I do it too. I'm left with
the fear that even after years of study and work programming, I'll
somehow be lacking without a theoretical base for my (future)
programming skill. If this is the case, and I NEED to learn theory, is
it possible outside of a school setting, because I've found many great
tutorials about how to program, but little about the more abstract side
of things.

Much of the theory side of things will come from the computer science side. Read up on discrete math (logic) but also on algorithm design and development.

if u read a lot of books they'll tell u most of what u need to know.

Ok, of course you can learn programing languages without a teacher.

But, keep in mind some litle things:
- Maybe, more important than the language will be understand what you need to programing and chose for the correct way.
- Concepts, normalizations and standards are very important to you make things that other people can understand and integrate on the future.

So, praject your future jobs. Probably will the best way to your success.

Good luck!

Eduardo

Programmers with no theory background tend to do stuff in a roundabout way. It works - but it's not efficient The theory gives you a nice, clean coding style with a lot of structure to it.