Networking is incredibly helpful. You don’t need to be best friends with these people, or even friends. You just need to interact with them. If you can, I suggest starting to go to some local meetup on a regular basis. It’s perfectly fine to observe without drawing attention to yourself until you feel like you have a better grip on things (if that’s something that helps, I’m making some blind assumptions here). How this ends up helping you is that eventually you are interacting with people who are working for a company that’s hiring. Then you can just ask that person for direct contact information or ask if they will pass along your resume.
As far as the work environment, programming is a field that seems to be an above-average fit for people on the spectrum. I’ve worked with people who have Aspergers, people with difficulty holding verbal conversations, and people with pronounced ticks. There’s a really high tolerance for “they’re kind of weird, but they know their stuff”.