Ask HN: Where should I start as a 34-year-old switching to software as a career?

Many people have had success with bootcamps. But remember, there is no guarantee of a job by attending one. Personally, I would only recommend a bootcamp to someone who has a) the disposal income to spend on one, and not get burned if things don't work out, and b) the person has the time and work ethic to devote to it 100%.

When you pay for a coding bootcamp, you are paying for the focused hands-on learning experience. If you don't feel that you can be disciplined to do it by your self, or think you can network better in one - it may be viable. Do your due diligence in researching bootcamps as well. For every good bootcamp there are two or three scams out there.

Personally I would advise that anyone looking to make a switch spends 10-12 months self-teaching and learning as much as possible. Build a few projects in whatever domain you're interested in, and then start applying. If you find that you aren't getting past the HR filter - it might help to go for a bootcamp or masers degree. But, I don't think dumping 15k+ into either one of those off the bat is a sure-fire way to make a career switch.

I don't have any experience working at start ups so I can't speak to that, but working for a smallish established company (~ 300 employees total) has been wonderful. Good support system, resources to encourage career growth and learning.

It also depends on your career goals and location. Breaking into a small or medium sized unknown company in the mid-west may be easier than trying to career switch into big-n in the bay area.

Our iOS curriculum is (IMO) among the best in the world, and it’s completely free until you’re hired and entirely online. Syllabus is here - https://learn.lambdaschool.com/syllabus/cs-ios.

We don’t focus purely on swift, but you’ll be very good at it, and we dive into a bit of Onjective C and C.

Actually, our first iOS class graduates in two weeks, and 50% already have job offers!

In my case I had existing knowledge of the basics and had programming experience (but not as my primary job role, nor in a team).

Here is what I can suggest: if you can at all leverage your existing domain experience it will serve you well. Try to figure out whether your employer can place you in a role where you can contribute in some way using your existing skill set while you further your software development skills.

Having taken some computer science classes, read programming books, and having programmed off and on in small things for many years was helpful to me, but I can't overstate how much that was all eclipsed by raw experience doing the job day in, day out. I quickly realized that there is simply no replacement for hands on programming experience, and having a team around to help fill my knowledge gaps was invaluable.