Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 132 posts

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

#61

Post by gremlinsinc »

I learned html/design in 98 when I was 18'ish, but I always thought of it as a hobby - not a real career, till web apps and wordpress came along, still I would install wp sites, and do SEO for people but still worked for shit pay and shitty jobs, in 2011 at 31, I started learning to code using MVC frameworks (Ruby on Rails and Laravel specifically), I learned better coding skills, etc...and it's only the past 3-4 years that i've been taken seriously and started being sought after by companies and small businesses for freelance work.

Best advice is just build stuff, and always work on your portfolio and resume. The more you can showcase that you've accomplished the better.

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

#62

Post by chrisbrandow »

As a chemist who did the same thing a few years later and you’re doing it now, my primary advice is that whatever you choose to do make a medium range plan of a few months. And then follow that plan rigorously without spending time reconsidering it along the way. Distraction is your biggest enemy. At the end of few months, assess how things are going and make a new medium term plan.

If it’s any encouragement, I started cold with iOS at age 40. I knew nothing but a little bit of C.

If you learn the program, there will be people who need your skills.

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

#63

Post by chx »

chrisgoman wrote: post #14

Develop any software for your domain (lab technician or microbiology) that solves a simple problem you see or encounter daily. Identify a problem in your current day job that can be solved with software like recording data in the lab, tracking supplies, etc. (nothing too complex) and come up with a solution (website to check-in/check-out, mobile app (?), etc.) and learn how to build it. It will not be perfect but you…

This is the right answer. There are any number of people freshly learned programming but those with a decade (I guess) of experience in some domain , that's way more rare. And then it's just basic supply and demand :)

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

#64

Post by simonh »

chrisgoman wrote: post #14

Develop any software for your domain (lab technician or microbiology) that solves a simple problem you see or encounter daily. Identify a problem in your current day job that can be solved with software like recording data in the lab, tracking supplies, etc. (nothing too complex) and come up with a solution (website to check-in/check-out, mobile app (?), etc.) and learn how to build it. It will not be perfect but you…

Couldn’t agree more, and this isn’t exclusive to any of the other advice given here.

The son of a friend graduated from a CS degree last year and still doesn’t have a job. I told him if he wants to be a software developer, then he should just develop software, and showed him some scripts and games i’d written in Pythonista on my phone. Nobody has to give you permission. High quality dev frameworks can be got for free. You can run web apps on a free tier on Google or AWS web hosting. Developing mobile apps is easy these days and dev accounts with Google or Apple are very affordable. Get a GitHub account for your projects and build up some rep on Stack Overflow. You don’t even need to do anything super fancy or commercial, just interesting or fun or novel and demonstrate an understanding of a range of technologies. Put links to all of these on your resume.

Set yourself objectives. 4 months to get a web app running on Google App Engine (you can get a tutorial app working in an afternoon!). A month to figure out Github and upload it, and do this for future projects. 2 months to port it to AWS. 4 months to get an app into the Play Store, or App Store. All this can be done in spare time, half the time following tutorials and the rest on whatever your apps do.

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

#65

Post by mathieubordere »

I did the same thing when I was 28. I had some prior exposure to Java at university but that's about it. I took a year off from work to teach myself to become a software engineer. It takes hard work and you will doubt yourself while you're doing it. My advice is to get your fundamentals right, everything else depends on it. With fundamentals I mean, learn your algorithms, understand how a program actually runs by writing interpreters and compilers, understand the memory hierarchy, etc. After my year of self study I took a job that was not fully in line with my goals as a software engineer, but it gave me time to further develop myself and actually acquire some real experience in the field. I'm 33 now and working as an Embedded Software engineer, and in comparison with my peers I think I'm performing well, it all depends on your motivation and interest to put in the extra hours after work to 'make up for lost time'. I'm extremely happy with the choice I've made.

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

#67

Post by Zelmor »

mathieubordere wrote: post #65

I did the same thing when I was 28. I had some prior exposure to Java at university but that's about it. I took a year off from work to teach myself to become a software engineer. It takes hard work and you will doubt yourself while you're doing it. My advice is to get your fundamentals right, everything else depends on it. With fundamentals I mean, learn your algorithms, understand how a program actually runs by wri…

>interpreters, compilers, memory hierarchy Those are nice if you want to do embedded and C. A complete waste of time for Frontend/Backend, mobile and desktop people in the beginnings.

Tell me why someone picking up Python/JS should learn the above mentioned things, rather than learn basic security principles and not pip/npm install blindly all the packages without checking the source? Change my mind.

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

#69

Post by yaseer »

Zelmor wrote: post #67
mathieubordere wrote: post #65

I did the same thing when I was 28. I had some prior exposure to Java at university but that's about it. I took a year off from work to teach myself to become a software engineer. It takes hard work and you will doubt yourself while you're doing it. My advice is to get your fundamentals right, everything else depends on it. With fundamentals I mean, learn your algorithms, understand how a program actually runs by wri…

>interpreters, compilers, memory hierarchy Those are nice if you want to do embedded and C. A complete waste of time for Frontend/Backend, mobile and desktop people in the beginnings. Tell me why someone picking up Python/JS should learn the above mentioned things, rather than learn basic security principles and not pip/npm install blindly all the packages without checking the source? Change my mind.

Because in learning those things, you don't just learn 'facts', you learn generalisable patterns of thought.

The generalisability is more obvious in something like physics where the same physical laws apply in different domains.

Computer science doesn't have axiomatic physical laws, but it does have recurring concepts. If you learn about memory hierarchies in computer architecture, you can apply similar principles in dealing with caching systems in web-applications.

Post reply on HN