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

Definitely not too old, Dev manager here. First step, study some programming courses using video where you build full stack projects. F.eg. meteor JS by Stephen grider on Udemy.com or the one by Andrew Mead (possibly better). Take both courses because you get more training on one framework before learning other stuff. Why meteor js? Because you can focus at the one language everyone needs in web development; JavaScript. Nobody can escape learning it given that it rules the web. Also you don't want to learn multiple languages as a beginner, because it makes your learning curve much harder. Then build something, for real and release it. The smallest thing you can imagine that would improve somebody's life just a tad and put it up online. Then continue extending it with more features, improve what you already built, and release at least weekly. Second, you lack a CS degree. BUT there is tons of people with CS degree that write crappy unmaintainable low quality code. Lucky for you I say, because with some effort you can use this widely spread quality disaster in the field to outshine many of those with fancy CS degrees. Most juniors with CS degrees I meet doesn't have a clue on how to write high quality maintainable code. So the next step would be to focus on that. How? Order these books, read them, take notes and practice the concepts: Clean code, Pragmatic programmer, Code complete. Second practice unit testing and although it's a bit hard when you begin writing them, just keep at it. Almost everyone I interview for software engineer positions seriously lack understanding of quality practices such as: clean code, defensive programming, unit testing etc. Since quality problems cost me millions - I would pick a junior without a CS degree but that has competence in those quality practices over an intermediate/senior lacking those skills (big majority I interview). Analysis and design is also important, but you can read up on those subjects as you move forward. To conclude; just learn the basics, build stuff and release often. Then remember this is an engineering discipline, it's not a business where crappy code belongs (sadly the business is full of it). Excel at quality practices and you will definitely raise a lot of interest from interviewers. This advice is the same I would give any newly baked CS graduate. Why? Because crappy programmers cost us more support, bug fixing, slows down development and so forth. If you decide not to be part of this ongoing software quality disaster, you can quite quickly become a very interesting candidate.

Congratulations! You've decided to go from being a specialist to being special.

The biggest advantage of your move is that as you dig into software development you will be equipped with two advantages:

Dual skills set plus a unified understanding of two different fields you might even be able to create new knowledge.

My advice would be to develop something in the field you already know, something that made your life more cumbersome but that technology could solve.

That way you will be using your intuition from a field you know to solve a specific problem while learning a new field.

I got my first internship as a developer in my late 20s, so like you didn't have a formal computer science education. There isn't any right way but this was my path.

You aren't too old! Keep in mind competing against 22 year olds for a job means you're also competing against many who have never held a real job yet, don't understand anything about professionalism, or have never had to wake up before 10AM on a daily basis, etc.

I honestly think the main concern is salary. You will almost certainly need to be flexible as you are starting from the bottom. You also may need to work to ensure that employers know you won't be too expensive to hire.

The first programming I did was Excel formulas and then SQL queries which I was fortunately able to learn how to do at work (I was in a non-technical role at a software product company), so this was more or less paid training. I then got into learning some basic Linux commands.

I was able to further dip my toes in by taking two programming classes online at a local state university, Intro to Programming with Java and Intro to Shell Scripting. I think these classes were about $1,000 each, which is a lot, but still a lot less than a bootcamp and didn't require me to quit my job. (I personally think Java is a great place to start programming but I don't know if this view is shared among most)

After that I finally had the courage to quit my job, attend a web dev focused bootcamp, and I started my first job about four months after that.

There are plenty of people who've worked 10 years in software (who are in their mid-30s) who've stagnated for the last 8 years. It's perfectly possible to compete even with people your own age within a year or so if you just tackle things to learn in a smart way. So don't let anyone tell you it's too late.

Are you saying this because you work as a data scientist and this is personal experience (that the field is booming), or are you saying this because this is what you've heard?

I tend to hear from actual data scientists that the field is a lot harder to get into than what the press is reporting.