Just about everyone here uses ASL, right? If not, oh well. but for the people who do, did you all take a class or something on coding, or did you just catch on right away. Or was it a lot of trial and error? Or perhaps something else. How do you all know what you are doing?! And don't tell me it was only the ASL tutorial... It had to be more than that.

Well, it's pretty much all of what you mentioned. ASL was my first language apart from HTML, and it took me a while to get used to, which is why I did (and still do infact) use the QDK editor, and then make any necessary modifications to the ASL script later.

The ASL guide does help a lot, then it's just a case of (How you put it) trial and error. I've been using several different languages and I stopped using ASL/QDK for a while, and when I came back to it I managed to pick it up more easily since it does have it's similarities to other programming languages.

I myself have not done any programming classes.

I started by using only QDK, but then started reading the code for the games I had made in notepad, seeing what the code looked like for all the different bits. Then I went through a stage on using both, usually using QDK to see where a code should go, I'd make a random script then find it in the code and change it to what I wanted, lolz. Most of the really hard coding I learnt direct from Tron. Also reading over people's games to see how thef did things was very insightful...

I've done a "programming coursE"... sort of.
Most of it was about computer network design, interface design, databse theory and design, concept of bits/bytes/information/data/data-storage etc.. So a scope of little random bits.

But it didn't really teach me too much..
It taught me variable naming conventions, a tiny bit about classes/methods, some database design, the names of network stuff, and the "dot" in visual basic.
(the dot is very important BTW - encapsulating object-oriented design).

Most of my stuff has been learnt from reading, and that's what any good programmer will reccomend.
Read anything you get your hands on, experiment, then read some more, and work out what's happening FROM WHAT'S DOCUMENTED.. What you think is going on is not always the truth.