My case is almost the same, only I switched from manuals to science fiction novels at some point. English lessons at school consisted mostly of handheld console games for me.
In addition to that, I learned German (to the greatest part; of course I had some interaction as well) from TV at age 5, when I moved to Germany. When school started (a year later) I could read, write and speak better German than most of my native classmates.
Back on topic, I agree with the notion that at least developers should all have a functional English at their disposal, it makes life easier. Also, there isn't nearly as much (useful) content for developers to be found on German or Russian websites, as far as I've discovered so far. Well, in my opinion that also applies to most other topics as well, but that's a different story.