Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you discover programming?

I got a degree in public relations and took a job doing tech sales at a Series A company. I was the 6th employee. The product was pretty unstable so I taught myself to code to improve their QA infra.(basically writing automated tests). I went on to build product for them.

Now I work as a SWE at FANG (not Amazon).

I definitely remember feeling like you did before I joined my first big company, but fortunately it's working out. Happy to answer any q's you might have along the way.

Thanks! Do you have any recommendations for types or scope of personal projects? I see the advice to build stuff a lot but never what or how much. I’m specifically interested in security and systems, NOT front end web dev which is what most guides and stuff are geared towards.

My fascination with automation basically is how I discovered the art of programming... programming is automation in it's most distilled form.

The path I took to programming was long but a relatively common path:

- Lego

- Which led to Lego mechanics

- Which led to mechanical engineering

- Which led to manufacturing

- Which led to automation

- Which led to programming (about 22 years old)

I'm nearly 50 and started at 39 1/2. I programmed BASIC back in the 80's and loved it but never thought of it as a career. I did however get very into Linux starting like 2005 but didn't program and never even considered I'd do that for a living.

Anyway, I wanted to build a device about a decade ago so I quit my job and learned a little Python so I could control it. It didn't work out after like a year. It was dumb idea and I didn't know enough to really do it properly.

But by that time I had somewhat of a handle on Bash and Python and basic HTML and someone approached me about building a small accounting app so I did it and picked up enough jQuery and CSS and SQL along the way from Stack Overflow it worked out. It was a mess but it worked. A maintenance guy at my apartments saw it why I was working on it, and his wife worked for a company that needed a similar app so I went and talked with them and wound up doing that and it was less of a mess (still not ideal). Then I had an idea for a SASS based on that, built it, didn't market it and wasn't that good, it generated 0 interest but I learned a lot more along the way and had taken some online classes in the meantime. Enough so I landed a real programming job for like a year where I learned even more. I had some freelance jobs on the side during this time. The job sucked and I quit and went back to freelancing and have been working ever since.

I will say it's a grind and you have to love it and be temperamentally suited for it and really put in some hours if you take this path. And it's probably easier if you are like in your 20s but it's still very possible.

I see a lot of people who think they will get into programming because it's a bunch of money but I think that doesn't generally work out as well for them. The interest is what drives you to learn new stuff and put in the time and beat through the frustration for hours until you are dancing and can just do stuff with your eyes closed. Not the money. I will say though lately I'm a little less excited as I see the same thing over and over but it's still cool and I'm really grateful to have had the time and opportunity and whatever mental dysfunction it is that allowed me to amass the skills I have. I don't think I'm super knowledgeable, I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room, I don't know much about advanced topics and would never pass reverse this tree whiteboard tests, but I can pump out useful apps that are increasingly maintainable and pleasant for end users. And people are willing to pay for it which still floors me sometimes.

Hi,

I am 43. I am probably atypical for my age range, as most friends would have started with an Atari, Amiga or Amstrad computer, and I had a PC at home from maybe 1984. I always complained that I had crappy games as a result, but for the rest, the PC was fine. I still remember text only Microsoft word.

I started programming in Microsoft BASICA, getting lost in GOTO hell. Then, Pascal, and, at age 13, I put all my savings in buying a C compiler (costed 100€ or so), and also getting a graphical library through shareware (remember ordering the floppy disks by mail).

At university, I moved from C to java, and I more or less stayed there as java is good enough / common for my trade in entreprise IT. I also do not like scripting languages, and prefer compiled languages (faster, errors found earlier).