Ask HN: Chances for Restarting a Career in CS @ 30+ ?

That sort of thing sounds terrible to people who're recruiting. The fact is being good at making software is about 20% actual coding ability, and 80% being diligent and organised, communicating with other people, and willingness to trudge through boring tasks like writing documentation and attending meetings. Faced with two candidates, one of whom is all "I love coding and I don't sleep if I'm working on something!" and the other who is "I like coding, but I put it to one side in the evenings to socialise, watch movies, read books" it'll be the second candidate who gets the job every single time.

If you want to get your first (or second, whatever) job writing software concentrate more on the 'getting a job' part than the 'writing software' part. Demonstrate skills that will show you're a person who is nice to be around. At the beginning of your career that is far more important than being able to solve hard problems, because the 'solving hard problems' bit is going to be someone else's job.

My strategy would be: learn one language very well, preferably a practical one like Javascript/Ruby/Python/C#/Java, do a small but significant (don't spend more than a month or two full time on it) open source or MVP project in it. This project will be your portfolio. Make sure you know at least the basic syntax of those 5 languages so you know which will suit you best.

After you have your portfolio project, you can be confident in applying for a job, if you picked one of the first 3 languages you might want to move to a big city like Munchen or Berlin that has lots of young companies to improve your prospects.

The key to being a good programmer in my opinion is to know about as many techniques and solutions as possible. This is why even during your process of learning your primary language and acquiring your first job, you should allow yourself to be distracted by fancy techniques and impractical languages. Learn languages like Haskell, Lisp, Erlang, C, don't become proficient in them, just enough to understand why they exist and why people love them, perhaps pick one of them up as your secondary language.

Also read a few of the good books you would get to read if you had done a university. IMO read "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach" by Kurose, and "Operating System Concepts" by Silberschatz. Unlike most CS books these are very practical and easy to read. If you'd really like some more heady stuff, try "Computer Algorithms" by Van Gelder. Although it's sort of out of fashion I think I have to recommend "Design Patterns" by Gamma (gang of four) as well.

Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I think if you're focused you could do all these things in under 6 months. And you would have made a great start as a programmer. On a university you'd spend at least 3 years doing this, 3 years you could also spend getting real experience, making a living and perhaps start a family. In my opinion that would be a waste. If you really aspire for a degree, why not do it when you retire? Also if you must study now, consider a Fachhochschule, as it would focus more on coding than on maths and other side acts of CS.

Good luck, and if you need more book recommendations send me a message.

You're - again IMO - right about it being only one of the factors.

The reason we hire mostly 'youngsters' (damn, never thought I would say this before reaching 30 myself) is that 'they' are more readily available. I'm in no way saying that young people have more energy, are more driven.

A reason you MIGHT consider - which I consider applicable to myself as well - is that as people 'age' their priorities shift.

I have to young kids at home (2 y/o and 5 w/o) and I consider them my absolute number one priority.

Most people in their early twenties don't have to make these priority considerations and are 'likely' to be more dedicated to your company (or at least appear to be). On the flipside: I guess twentysomethings are easier to ditch your company and leave for a better paycheck as well.

That's why I'm saying that I never really take age into consideration when considering a candidate. It just isn't a factor for me.

For me, most imporant things are (in no particular order):

* Cultural match (/ Social skills)

* Drive (want to learn, want to make stuff)

* Pragmatism

* Tech skills

Writing good software is very much about abstract thinking and good language skills. I think you'll find that the things you learned studying literature and philosophy may be a lot more applicable that common wisdom suggests.