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I self-learned to code at 30

kaapi.team

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Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#91

Post by loblollyboy »

bmitc wrote: post #88
sixQuarks wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why we have to sugarcoat it. Not only can anyone not be able to code, I'd go as far as saying that MOST people will never be able to code a production application no matter how much teaching/resources you throw their way. My mother, at her peak, would have never learned how to code even if you held a gun to her head.

Would have is different than could have. There’s lots of things in life I don’t care to learn, but it doesn’t mean I couldn’t. To be perfectly frank, programming is one of the easier things in life I’ve learned, and it’s usually only difficult for the wrong reasons like poor documentation, bugs in other people’s code, people, etc.

This. First of all, I don’t think there is a “critical” period for learning programming like there is for languages, or motor skills (try learning to skateboard as an adult). My school curriculum, a foreign language and, yes, skateboarding have all been a lot more challenging than programming. I’d say that learning network administration is probably a lot harder too b/c stuff like that isn’t as logical as a programming language.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#92

Post by robotnikman »

marlowe221 wrote: post #36

I started at 37 and got my first full time job a couple of months after I turned 38. I was a lawyer and hated it - now I love going to work every day. But it wasn't easy. I was working full time in a demanding profession and I'm married with two kids under 5 years old. So basically I spent every free moment I had working on learning HTML/CSS/JavaScript. If my kids were asleep, I was coding. I basically had to burn th…

That puts things into perspective. I sometimes worry about my ability to become a software engineer just because I never finished my degree and I'm in my late 20's.

But I already know java fairly well and a few other languages like python as well, maybe its just a matter of making some more side projects and selling myself better.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#93

Post by sixQuarks »

bmitc wrote: post #88
sixQuarks wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why we have to sugarcoat it. Not only can anyone not be able to code, I'd go as far as saying that MOST people will never be able to code a production application no matter how much teaching/resources you throw their way. My mother, at her peak, would have never learned how to code even if you held a gun to her head.

Would have is different than could have. There’s lots of things in life I don’t care to learn, but it doesn’t mean I couldn’t. To be perfectly frank, programming is one of the easier things in life I’ve learned, and it’s usually only difficult for the wrong reasons like poor documentation, bugs in other people’s code, people, etc.

I actually meant could have.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#94

Post by godshatter »

I taught myself to code in junior high, pre-web and (unless you worked at a university) pre-internet. I would have killed for the access to the plethora of programming-related content available to people today. I had access to a couple of others who were also trying to learn what we could do on a TRS-80 Level I, and that's about it. I bought computing magazines that had some code in the back of them, and learned from a few programs that were passed around on diskettes. Later my parents bought me a Tandy Color Computer. I purchased an assembler for it and a book on 6809 assembly programming and finally felt like I was making some progress.

I just wanted to throw that out there. It's a completely different world now and the access we all have to programming resources would blow the mind of the younger me. If I can give one suggestion, it's to learn about how computers work at a low level as you're learning whatever language calls to you. It helps tie the concepts together in a way that learning only the syntax and quirks of one language does not.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#95

Post by arcturus17 »

iainctduncan wrote: post #80
arcturus17 wrote: post #14

I learned to code at 29, and I'm sorry to say that, compared to to the author, I don't have such a rosy outlook... For context, I was a Product Manager, and fell in love with CS/SEng by taking Harvard's CS50 in my free time. I then did other MOOCs on topics like algorithms and software architecture before finally settling on a 12-course masters in Software Engineering at Harvard Extension. I took a hybrid approach co…

One isn't going to get to CTO in only hundreds of hours, but one can get to "getting paid" in that amount of time, and then, if you're smart and keep prioritize learning, get to CTO while getting paid. I started web dev at 30 (though had coded in high school), and was a startup CTO at 44, now an architecture consultant, and the best advice I had in the beginning from a good mentor was to structure everything relentle…

I agree with pretty much everything you've said (your comment on the tension between billing and learning being particularly poignant), but you're talking about a 14 year path versus the gist of the article, which talks about shipping commercial products with 400 hours of self-learning - an unrealistic expectation for most people.

You're probably better off planning for the decade-long path (starting humble, and improving incrementally) than thinking that anything remarkable is going to happen in your first couple of years.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#96

Post by potta_coffee »

iainctduncan wrote: post #80
arcturus17 wrote: post #14

I learned to code at 29, and I'm sorry to say that, compared to to the author, I don't have such a rosy outlook... For context, I was a Product Manager, and fell in love with CS/SEng by taking Harvard's CS50 in my free time. I then did other MOOCs on topics like algorithms and software architecture before finally settling on a 12-course masters in Software Engineering at Harvard Extension. I took a hybrid approach co…

One isn't going to get to CTO in only hundreds of hours, but one can get to "getting paid" in that amount of time, and then, if you're smart and keep prioritize learning, get to CTO while getting paid. I started web dev at 30 (though had coded in high school), and was a startup CTO at 44, now an architecture consultant, and the best advice I had in the beginning from a good mentor was to structure everything relentle…

Thanks for this advice. I'm 37, started at 30 and I'm at the midway point. I'd like to get where you are.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#97

Post by asmr »

Not a big fan of these survivorship bias blog posts. I've been fiddling with code since I was about 11 years old (ActionScript for Club Penguin cheat tools as well as some Visual Basic). I got pretty serious in High School and learned Java as well Python. I am now pretty comfortable in the web stack as well as C, but still do not have the confidence to become a developer. I don't get how people can spend roughly 3 months learning to code and make a career out of it. Surely they must be lacking in certain core areas of CS.

I get that these kinds of posts are meant to be motivational, "Anyone can do it! Hoorah!" type of thing, but it seems misleading.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#98

Post by crispyambulance »

sixQuarks wrote: post #83
devoutsalsa wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like to say that not everyone can code. I like to say that not everyone will enjoy coding. Personally, I find it more liberating to confront my personal challenges in learning something in terms of how much fun I'm having and/or how much work it'll take to get good at it. For many years I told tried coding and told myself that I couldn't do it when it got to hard. But the honest answer is that I simply didn't…

I don't know why we have to sugarcoat it. Not only can anyone not be able to code, I'd go as far as saying that MOST people will never be able to code a production application no matter how much teaching/resources you throw their way. My mother, at her peak, would have never learned how to code even if you held a gun to her head.

> ...never be able to code a production application...

It's true, the vast majority of people will never code a "production application".

BUT, many folks code everyday in the form of excel macros, R, Mathematica, Matlab or Julia notebooks. Many people create programs and scripts in all kinds of tools to get stuff done. IT'S ALL STILL PROGRAMMING, it's just not what folks here would consider a traditional "production application". The people who do this are domain practitioners who use computing to do things, but don't have a need to spend a million dollars to hire a team of "real programmers" and their entourage of PMP's, sales, support, and customer success agents to do it for them.

As far as folks "not being able to code" that's all a matter of inclination and background. There's nothing special about software development. Lot's of people can do successfully at various levels. Some are more DIY than others, but I think you would be surprised at what some people's grandma's can do with the right motivation and background.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#99

Post by yitchelle »

sixQuarks wrote: post #60

Self taught coder at 44. My memory isn’t the greatest, probably one of the hardest things I’ve done, required so much persistence to get through all the frustrations, only reason I made it was due to huge motivation. There’s no way in hell everyone can learn how to code. Even if most people had the intellectual capability to code (which they don’t), most don’t have the patience and persistence required to follow thro…

>> There’s no way in hell everyone can learn how to code.

I have to really disagree with this statement. I agree that not everyone can write the next Google search engine, or even the next personal website. But you don't have to do to learn how to code.

My coding skills are pretty crappy after stepping away from it some years back, but I would still consider myself to be able to code something up. Even a small VBA script to help with Excel automation should be considered coding.

Re: I self-learned to code at 30

#100

Post by electrondood »

sixQuarks wrote: post #60

Self taught coder at 44. My memory isn’t the greatest, probably one of the hardest things I’ve done, required so much persistence to get through all the frustrations, only reason I made it was due to huge motivation. There’s no way in hell everyone can learn how to code. Even if most people had the intellectual capability to code (which they don’t), most don’t have the patience and persistence required to follow thro…

I think of it this way: Most people can go to the gym and subject themselves to the physical discomfort of running, lifting weights, etc.

Few people will dedicate themselves to this discomfort on a daily basis.

Writing code makes the brain hurt. It's perpetually frustrating. We're in a bubble here, but outside of this bubble, people generally do everything they can to avoid mental effort.

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