Ask HN: I am in my late 20s looking to change careers. Any advice?

I did it at 36. It wasn’t easy on my own but I stuck to my plan. I probably spent 14K doing it and lost a year of income in total.

Today I both enjoy it and regret it. In the end it’s work. Sometimes the most enjoyable work and other times not as much.

I teach people in your position in life. I recommend at this stage bite size steps in education. Find Colleges with 1 or 2 year programming curriculum. This way you get to working sooner and see for real if this is what you want. These programs tend to be practical in nature. More how to use a particular tools chain to develop in a specific set of languages. Less of the theoretical topics that a CS degree would give you.

You could learn more later and ratchet up your programming "status".

Think about what is is you'd like to develop. "Developer" is so broad a term it's almost meaningless in the modern world. Do you want to work on logistics systems? Finance? Mobile apps? Social Media?

No wrong answers here, but if you're thinking about becoming a developer, it's probably worth narrowing down what it is that interests you, and learning about what sort of skills and prerequisites there may be. Finance for instance involves some regulatory stuff to be aware of (if not outright get licensed for). Payroll type development may involve interfacing with some VERY old systems (ie, consider learning COBOL). Mobile apps are much on the entire opposite end of the spectrum.

Sometimes it's worth perhaps finding more about the surrounding industry before just diving into a development job -- you could consider even taking a job in the field and making a lateral move into the IT side of things in this case, and perhaps avoid taking on a ton of education only to find you're not actually a huge fan of the industry you thought you wanted to work in.

Best of luck in any case!