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Turning into a hacker aged 27

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Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#71

Post by owyn »

FiddlerClamp wrote: post #67

Do you think it's possible to become a programmer at age 43? I've always loved computers and have written programs in BASIC, VB, WordBasic, and the like, but never got into C or OO programming. Would anyone hire a freshly-minted 43-year-old developer? Or is this a fool's errand?

It's never too late, but there is some age bias in hiring. You probably aren't going to work for a hot startup but there are plenty of interesting jobs, especially if you have some kind of domain specific knowledge that you can apply. My dad switched careers around 40 and went back to school and became a programmer until he retired in his 60's. He did a lot of payroll systems stuff. He worked for hospitals, insurance companies, manufacturing companies etc, starting out doing Cobol but kept up to date and in the end was doing .NET. In the beginning he took whatever job he could get and we moved around a lot, but it can be done. :)

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#72

Post by FiddlerClamp »

owyn wrote: post #71
FiddlerClamp wrote: post #67

Do you think it's possible to become a programmer at age 43? I've always loved computers and have written programs in BASIC, VB, WordBasic, and the like, but never got into C or OO programming. Would anyone hire a freshly-minted 43-year-old developer? Or is this a fool's errand?

It's never too late, but there is some age bias in hiring. You probably aren't going to work for a hot startup but there are plenty of interesting jobs, especially if you have some kind of domain specific knowledge that you can apply. My dad switched careers around 40 and went back to school and became a programmer until he retired in his 60's. He did a lot of payroll systems stuff. He worked for hospitals, insurance…

Thanks - I do have some domain knowledge. I don't have to work for a hot startup...I'd rather work for somewhere a tad more stable. :) Done the startup thing a few times as a writer.

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#73

Post by v21 »

z0r wrote: post #37
guynamedloren wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a very good point. I've never realized it before, but now that I think about it, this is something that I see all the time - a complete and utter lack of entry level positions on job boards and hiring pages across the web. I wonder if there's an opportunity to be had here? There must certainly be a thriving untapped market of entry-level programmers who may be willing to take a pay cut to hone their skills f…

Bwahaha, there's a huge market of entry-level workers in all kinds of fields (software being just one of them) where people work essentially for free (unpaid internships or internships with a small stipend). It's kind of disgusting!

And illegal in the UK. There's an ongoing campaign about these -some nice examples can be seen at http://fuckyeahfreeinterns.tumblr.com/

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#74

Post by billybob »

naithemilkman wrote: post #5
billybob wrote: post #3

That's the age when I really started coding. Now I'm in my second full-time programming job and building a pretty great resume. My tips: 1) Study and practice. Pick a topic you don't know, choose a book that's well reviewed, and learn it. 2) It's better to ask a dumb question than to never know the answer. 3) Do a bit (not too much) of reading on things like HN and JoelOnSoftware, etc, to help you pick what to study…

Thanks for the tips. Out of curiosity, what were you doing before and what made you jump to programming?

I was a journalist, and unhappy. Took a break, went back to school (to study music), met a girl, and we decided to get married. By that time she was in grad school a few hours away. When we married, I moved there and had to find a new job.

I knew HTML and got a job doing tech support for cell phones. My employer had no internal web site and I saw that they needed a page to share links to reference sites, so I made a simple HTML page, just dropped onto a shared file server, not even a web server. Then I started adding pages of training material, etc.

I had just heard (this was 2007) that CSS could be used for layout - gasp! - so I bought Eric Meyer's CSS: The Definitive Guide and studied during lunch breaks and evenings. I spiffed up the site. Next I got Head First Javascript to add some animated menus. Soon after, somebody told me about jQuery, and eventually I caught onto that.

As I added more pages, it sucked to have to copy and paste my common menu, so a friend recommended PHP. I had to set up Apache for that, though, so I used XAMPP. Now I could do includes! But wouldn't it be nice to have some database interaction? I read a PHP book and added that too. Eventually the system was pretty complex, with object-oriented database interactions, permissions controls, AJAX widgets, etc.

All this time I was getting advice from my best friend (we were roommates in college), who is a truly awesome coder with famous companies on his resume. And I was discovering that I really enjoyed this stuff and had a knack for it. Also, all this time, I was still doing tech support: I could be knee-deep in a coding problem and get a phone call, and I had to pick it up, and it might take 2 hours.

But by the time I left, I had a good enough resume to get a full-time programming job. And I continue to learn. I've made the jump to Ruby and Rails (Ruby is a lovely language), test-driven development, etc. I'll never be DHH or Linus Torvalds, but I hope to do solid work and keep having fun.

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#75

Post by chernevik »

sayemm wrote: post #9

I'm 25 years old and I'm pretty much doing the same thing. Taking time off to work on my programming chops instead of jumping into another idea again as the "business guy". It sure beats spending six-figures getting an MBA or going to grad school these days... and I'm learning a ton. I'm absolutely loving it. I learned Python first, then learned how to use linux and emacs, played with firefox add-ons to learn Javascr…

Me too. Been several years learning to implement an idea of my own -- learning an enormous amount.

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#76

Post by chernevik »

guynamedloren wrote: post #6

I have huge respect for your drive and ambition, but there's something I just don't get (and it applies to many aspiring hackers/entrepreneurs, not just you). Why do you need a mentor? Why "cold emailing startups"? Why do you need somebody to "take you in"? Why not just hit the books and start hacking away? This isn't meant to be a personal attack on you by any means. I've noticed a huge movement toward "mentorship"…

I've been teaching myself, somewhat similar to OP. I'm too isolated to know about trends, but the few conversations I've had with more experienced people are enormously helpful.

-- They help weed out the bad and the WTF to bring forward the good (in my case, okay) stuff.

-- Their discussion of design issues can help you figure out your framework, and show directions you hadn't known.

-- They give you some sense of what you've accomplished, what you haven't and what you must improve.

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#77

Post by keeptrying »

kai-zer wrote: post #53
keeptrying wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be interested in being tutored on writing a web app? I'm assuming you live in NYC? I can tutor you how to build a full web stack incising delaying it to the end user. I'm interested in building a set of lessons for this purpose which I would then like to sell.if you don't know programmimng then it would be a bg commitment but You could definitely afford such a course. If interested you can email me: railsno…

Not a total newbie, studied engineering, been programming little projects for years and had a few side jobs while in school doing mostly simple stuff. Will hit you up, curious what you have though, and always looking to make new connections.

Cool.

Re: Turning into a hacker aged 27

#79

Post by keeptrying »

yaovi wrote: post #61
naithemilkman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have definitely seen a few other guys on HN posting about this as well. I think one of the commenters in this thread is another such person.

I graduated from a college in Kenya with a Computer Science degree. I understand OOP and other programming concepts but I feel I do not know enough when compared to my friends in the United States or other European countries. In college we mostly coded basic applications in either Vb.Net or C#. I am trying to become a better hacker by learning JS, C and Python. I am however finding it difficult as I cannot find proje…

First just write some small little tool in python. I need a command line tool that will parse a website and write it out as a database record.

eg: http://www.tourdust.com/products/844-atlas-mountain-sahara-d...

I need to get that and write it to a database with its fields like description, photo, cost, number of people etc.

Let me know if your interested. In return I can answer guide you becoming a better hacker ie, what you should read, questions on C,Python etc ...

But one warning - in the end its just about sitting in front a computer building something till its done. :)

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