I concur with everything AmenJonathan is saying, but even an associates in CIS is better than nothing, or an associates in computer engineering. I work with a guy that's got an associates in computer engineering from a small school called Spencerian College here in Lexington, but he's the entry level help desk guy for us. I also know a guy that's in his early 30's that's an operations manager for a local large electronics manufacturing plant and he only has an associates in CIS, so it worked for him. He works with DB2 databases and Cisco networks. AmenJonathan is right about the ideal being a BS in CS. That's the gold standard if you want to program, but other degrees work, depending on your focus. But, I've heard California is unique in that there's so much competition there for jobs that it's a different environment and you have a lot of very bright folks there. Especially with Microsoft being just up the road in Redmond.

Depending on your location, and job availability (the demand) vs the number of available programmers (the supply), it may be either harder or easier to get a job with no degree and less experience. Try talking to some of the hiring managers, or at least to HR, at places you'd like to work in your area and find out what they require or would like to see in a potential candidate. Ask them what you can do to improve your chances at a job with them. Make sure you bring an updated well-written resume. They will most likely be happy to at least talk to you and it's a form of networking that might get you in the door. If they see that you're driven and focused and have a goal in mind, that's a positive, and they'll remember your name - yet another way to make your application/resume stand out. Talking to people is free and it's a form of career counseling that might help you in the long run.

Like Grant side, it's an extremely good idea to work on other stuff after hours. Stay after work for a few hours and work on other projects like building WPF or even Win Forms applications or web applications. That link to the career lab I sent earlier talked about trending stuff like MVC, Web API, big data, Erlang, etc. and how that's good stuff to learn - and not many of your degreed competition may have experience there. Books are helpful, or you can even go through Pluralsight courses/videos to help step you through some things. See what your employer will pay for to help you improve and indirectly benefit them. My employer pays for a monthly $50 Pluralsight membership and one of the very eye-opening courses I've taken (okay, I'm still working on it) is the HTML5 Line of Business Apps with Bootstrap, MVC4 and Web API. Wow, good stuff that I haven't worked with previously and it shows you some detail about how to write a clean, modern web app. I also went through the web api course from Jon Flanders titled Introduction to the .NET Web API. The thing that's a bonus with Pluralsight is that they typically don't just show you how to connect a grid or dropdown to a data source. They go through how to use Fiddler and even through in some Visual Studio tips along the way. BTW, according to Stephen Walther's ASP.NET 3.5 book, more developers are now using C# over VB.NET. You may consider switching, especially if local employers use that predominately. I know I've personally seen very little VB.NET jobs in this area.

Another option for you might be to take on a support (help desk, technical support or other?) or IT role first while you're working on that degree. That might help pay you a little better for the time being and get some additional experience. I worked technical support before I had any degree, but it was a coop role. That might be another option for you at some schools. If you can get another programming job that's even better to help get direct experience. But that was my experience at Lexmark without a computer degree - it's definitely a longer and harder process to get better positions with better pay. I knew some guys there that worked software maintenance roles first. We also had test team guys with programming experience there too, so it's a "lesser" position where you can get in the door and hopefully work your way up. Good luck...