Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

Yeah, it's really difficult because a lot of the drive expressed in OP is for a new source of opportunity... The problem is that ageisms and such definitely take root in our industry, trying to work healthy hours at a startuppy place when you are older seems very precarious. I think you are on point that technical management has more availability, if that's the constraint.

If the constraint is instead that programming looks fun but you want to get exposed to as much of it as possible, I mean, I would suggest that OP’s Dad start building an indie game or so? Doesn't have to be a bestseller to sharpen thinking about design and aesthetic and underlying mechanics and state and data structures... I work in web but the amount of framework churn and such is kind of something I wouldn't force others through.

If you did want something more webby, you would want to practice with something you find interesting... If you wanted, maybe something that touches a lot of other technologies. If you think about writing your own GitHub, you start with git repositories and cloud hosting and deployment, you can move into CI/CD type workflows pretty easily, maybe that is a better way to start off web programming?

The other thing I will say is, Big Tech companies are often places where you can get one role and then ask for their developer education tracks where they teach their accountants etc how to become developers if they want to pivot. Say for example, being a manager at Google but having some 20% project that lets you contribute code and get feedback. Bigger more established companies have fewer problems with ageism, because they are much more sensitive as lawsuit targets for those sorts of things, so they have to get their s** together.

Also worth saying, the prior job history is an asset. A lot of developers do not speak business-ese. If you are a solid programmer who can talk to C-levels, you are a potential CTO at the right sort of place. Because you can translate, and because you feel comfortable walking into a contract negotiation with some client as “okay, how can I not say ‘no’ to everything but push back on the really hard problems while ‘yes, and’-ing all of the tractable stuff to get them on board.” Consultancy is one of the ways to do that, but not the only one. But worth calling out that as an asset if it helps focus the journey more.

I definitely believe it is possible to learn programming at the age of 61. Certainly not for everyone - some people are not the programmer-type at any age. But if the curiousity and the will are there and the brain is still working fine - yes, definitely!

I learned Rust at age 55.

But! Programming is not only about learning a language. There is this huge background of methods, practices, technologies (network/ip/socket, data formats, databases, unicode, regular expressions, xml/xsl, markup languuages), Operating Systems, procedures (CI, VC...) and so forth. This vast amount of knowledge is gained by experience over decades. The young programmer does not have the experience either, but has enough time ahead to become a senior eventually. It will be very difficult to reach a senior level when starting at 50 or 60 - there is simply not enough time to catch up. I started programming at age 16, btw.

So I would definitely let him dive into programming just to see how it goes and support him on this challenge. It will also serve mental fitness in high ages. Getting into programming at that age, with the need to make a living from it and no plan B - I consider this too risky!!

I vouch what another comment said, take the consulting route. I've said this before, but in 2019 I've switched to consulting because I've wasted close to 6 months of that year applying to jobs. The hiring processes were that bad for me at the time. And I'm only in my 30s and didn't even have to consider any age bias.

Another practice is applying en masse, if you're not already doing that. I used to apply sequentially to jobs, picking only the best fit and going through the interview process one by one. A waste of time, bulk apply to dozen of job listing (and directly to companies) and pick the first company that throws in an offer (and which also seems decent during the interview).

Can he pull some strings to make it work? I'm sure he has some high up connections in other companies that may offer him a position out of respect or else?

If you started programming at age 16, I'm not sure the fact that you learned Rust at age 55 is relevant here -- as you say "Programming is not only about learning a language". With your 39+ (=55-16) years of experience, I'm sure you have learned the background that made it quite easy to learn Rust at age 55.