40 year old tech-entrepreneur here. In my 30s, I became the tech lead who I needed as a co-founder. I learned by doing, with periods of great intensity, over many years. There's so much I haven't accomplished yet and so much more to learn. Setting the right goals has been just as challenging as learning how to accomplish them. I take a first-principles approach to understanding fundamentals rather than simply hacking together a solution. This is a very time and energy-consuming approach, but it lends itself to stronger long-term results. Expertise compounds itself over time, block by block. The first year working with any new domain of material is always the hardest, but enduring the process ultimately yields great returns. Endurance is essential to growth. Anyone out there who is reading this and experiencing hardship, do not give up! These hard times will pass, your fears will subside, and a stronger version you will remain. You can achieve your goals!
On finally learning to program at the age of 40
101–110 of 169 posts
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#102I'm having a difficult time believing that someone picked up coding and is proficient in doing so at 40 years old unless they had prior experience in something that was similar.
It takes years to become proficient in coding to the point where you don't utilize massive amounts of executive function (which we have a finite amount of in any given day). In addition the act of reading and writing code does a ton of damage to the Wernicke and Brocas area. Over time it can cause damage to the ventral what pathway to the point of complete speech impediment, memory loss and even Alzheimers.
Always be extremely skeptical of anyone learning to code in their 40s, they can do it for short stretches but it is probably not a good idea to pick up coding for the first time in your 40s since the probability of doing damage to your brain is going to be relatively high.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#103Sigh.
Every new blog posts of someone finding joy in Rust makes me think there's something wrong with me.
I started with Ruby, then migrated to JavaScript, then was introduced to the joy of static types, first with Flow, then with TypeScript — and now I'm stuck. Dynamically typed languages, including Ruby, Python, or PHP, terrify me; I can't understand people singing praises to Python. OCaml looks ... ugly. Rust looks both ugly and weird. Haskell is luringly beautiful, but at the same time hard and elusive as a unicorn.
While Typescript is so nice and warm and cozy...
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#104I'm having a difficult time believing that someone picked up coding and is proficient in doing so at 40 years old unless they had prior experience in something that was similar. It takes years to become proficient in coding to the point where you don't utilize massive amounts of executive function (which we have a finite amount of in any given day). In addition the act of reading and writing code does a ton of damage…
> Over time it can cause damage to the ventral what pathway to the point of complete speech impediment, memory loss and even Alzheimers.
This sounds like complete guff to me. Citation sorely needed.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#105I'm having a difficult time believing that someone picked up coding and is proficient in doing so at 40 years old unless they had prior experience in something that was similar. It takes years to become proficient in coding to the point where you don't utilize massive amounts of executive function (which we have a finite amount of in any given day). In addition the act of reading and writing code does a ton of damage…
> Over time it can cause damage to the ventral what pathway to the point of complete speech impediment, memory loss and even Alzheimers. This sounds like complete guff to me. Citation sorely needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressive_aphasia Speak to a neuroscientist if you don't believe me.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#106I'm having a difficult time believing that someone picked up coding and is proficient in doing so at 40 years old unless they had prior experience in something that was similar. It takes years to become proficient in coding to the point where you don't utilize massive amounts of executive function (which we have a finite amount of in any given day). In addition the act of reading and writing code does a ton of damage…
I started programming at 39 1/2. (well except for a year or two of BASIC when I was a teen).
I've been doing it professionally for 9 years now and I turn 50 next spring. No brain damage noted yet.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#107Sigh. Every new blog posts of someone finding joy in Rust makes me think there's something wrong with me. I started with Ruby, then migrated to JavaScript, then was introduced to the joy of static types, first with Flow, then with TypeScript — and now I'm stuck. Dynamically typed languages, including Ruby, Python, or PHP, terrify me; I can't understand people singing praises to Python. OCaml looks ... ugly. Rust look…
ReasonML is pretty much Ocaml with "not-so-ugly" syntax.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the U.S. only a very small percentage of lawyers ever get to the point where they make $250 an hour, and even if they do they only have a certain amount of years they can earn that much then if they don't make partner at whatever firm they're at they get put out to pasture. During the time they're making that much money they're basically trapped working insane hours at one firm. Most lawyers don't even make six fi…
Disbarring is really not that common [1][2]. [1] "Disbarment is quite rare: in 2011, only 1,046 lawyers were disbarred." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disbarment [2] https://www.rocketlawyer.com/blog/getting-disbarred-is-harde...
Yes, but it's always there as an option if the lawyer doesn't do what they want them to. Also, you can get in this kind of trouble for criminal charges unrelated to work done at your day job. I've known lawyers who got into trouble with the bar over getting a DUI or drug charges.
That kind of risk just doesn't really exist in software engineering beyond regular criminal background checks.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#109I'm having a difficult time believing that someone picked up coding and is proficient in doing so at 40 years old unless they had prior experience in something that was similar. It takes years to become proficient in coding to the point where you don't utilize massive amounts of executive function (which we have a finite amount of in any given day). In addition the act of reading and writing code does a ton of damage…
> In addition the act of reading and writing code does a ton of damage to the Wernicke and Brocas area. Over time it can cause damage to the ventral what pathway to the point of complete speech impediment, memory loss and even Alzheimers.
Source? I couldn't verify this with some cursory searching, and these seem like extraordinary claims. Your links to Wikipedia don't appear to offer support either.
Re: On finally learning to program at the age of 40
#110Yeah so first off - great! It's a super rewarding skill to have and I'm grateful to be a programmer myself.
Turning that skill into your profession is going to be tough. I say this because I've been programming professional for 20 years or so and I'm currently interviewing. The process of getting a coding job has gotten extremely hard and demanding. 5-8 years back it was solely based on the interview; if you knew your stuff and could talk-the-talk, they'd generally take a chance you could walk-the-walk.
Now, it's gotten extremely unreasonable. Mostly in the 'code-challenges' being asked. I recently was given an challenge and after they gave me a small overview of it, I asked roughly what the time-box should be to get a feel for what they thought the effort take. The hiring manager said to me 'it shouldn't take more than 8 hours'. I was shocked. I've been given many coding challenges, they generally fall into the 2 hours or less category. 8 hours is a serious time commitment. I ended up passing because if this is what they find reasonable during the interview I can't imagine what kind of demands they'd place on me day-in-day out.
That's just one recent example. Before that I was asked to write a simple todo list, and given a time box of 2 days. In that case I chose to do it because I knew I could do something like that in way less than 2 days. I ended up using the full 2 days just sprucing up the UX. I ended up not getting an offer from that company because I bombed the 2 hour group interview which I knew would happen; our family pet had been suddenly ill and in the ICU for 4 days straight and my wife and I had maybe 8 hours of sleep over the previous 5 days. Of course I tried to reschedule but the technical recruiter was adamant this last interview was just a formality, they loved my star-wars themed todo list (Jedi-Do, it's on my github: https://github.com/LowRezSkyline/Jedi_Do) and an offer was pending.
So it's one thing to learn programming and quite another to get through the crazy gate-keeping happening these days and land an actual job. Maybe it's easier for entry level programming positions, I have no idea.
Best of luck either way!