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Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

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Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#51

Post by tagabek »

patio11 wrote: post #3

It is absolutely possible to pick up enough programming skill on the side to be dangerous. It makes you substantially more valuable at virtually whatever you do, assuming you're in some sort of knowledge work. A reasonably smart person can go from knowing nothing to knowing enough to build things people will pay for in probably under a year. Traditional education is valuable for programming but is neither necessary n…

Patrick's words could not be more true. Just three months ago I was making literally $0. At that point, I had some programming skills and the desire to make money with them, but I had never really followed through with anything. That's when I decided to change things. Through hard work (although less than I expected) and literally going outside and meeting with people, I was able to make $900 in a week. This might seem like not much, but as a broke freshman college student, I was blown away. I have since grown my business endeavors, and am currently making $X,000/month and saving for life after college (I hear it's expensive).

Seriously. To anyone considering getting into software for pleasure, money, personal growth, or any combination of the former, go for it!

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#52

Post by MortenK »

It's definitely possible, here's a real-world example. A highly valued employee in a (relatively) small, software development house had a very varied background. He had been dabbling in tech, but really came from all sorts of manual labor jobs. It wasn't until he was 40-45 that he got a bit more serious about IT. Learned a bit of HTML, a bit of Flash, a bit of graphical design (this particular guy had always enjoyed drawing) etc.

He got hired to his first IT job when he was about 45 if I recall correctly, and I was at his 10 year anniversary some years ago.

This particular guy is not a star developer or star graphical designer, but he is sufficiently skilled as to build the websites, make design for their more complicated web apps, taking charge of the e-marketing production, internal support etc etc.

He is extremely valuable to the business due to his variety of skills, but I'm sure he could also have become very accomplished in one discipline, if his interests had been more focused.

Really, it's possible. The great thing about software development is you can learn pretty much all of it on your own.

It does however require a real interest and determination, because self-study is tough and it takes a lot of hours of both study and practice to become valuable to an employer.

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#53

Post by kybernetyk »

patio11 wrote: post #3

It is absolutely possible to pick up enough programming skill on the side to be dangerous. It makes you substantially more valuable at virtually whatever you do, assuming you're in some sort of knowledge work. A reasonably smart person can go from knowing nothing to knowing enough to build things people will pay for in probably under a year. Traditional education is valuable for programming but is neither necessary n…

> A reasonably smart person can go from knowing nothing to knowing enough to build things people will pay for in probably under a year.

This is so true. While you won't get to expert status on everything related to programming in one year you can learn enough about a certain language/API to build products.

And running a software business is really more selling and marketing than programming anyways.

> if you have enough time to run a WoW guild ...

Been there, done that. This statement is also incredibly true ... now I'm thinking about suing Blizzard for the three years they robbed me ;)

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#54

Post by kybernetyk »

glimcat wrote: post #4
patio11 wrote: post #3

It is absolutely possible to pick up enough programming skill on the side to be dangerous. It makes you substantially more valuable at virtually whatever you do, assuming you're in some sort of knowledge work. A reasonably smart person can go from knowing nothing to knowing enough to build things people will pay for in probably under a year. Traditional education is valuable for programming but is neither necessary n…

"Software Businesses for MMO Addicts: The Dragons Wore Suits" There are also numerous similarities between progression raiding and marketing. Replace phases with funnel stages, try different strategies until you figure out which one results in fewer wipes...

React to unpredictable market changes aka nerfs/buffs ...

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#55

Post by lsiebert »

Sure. Heck, the Coursera class, startup engineering, is still taking new people, and it's free and strongly supportive of working professionals.

Don't expect miracles. You will always be learning more, and people who have been doing things for longer then you will know more, even if they are younger. Measure your progress based on your own abilities.

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#56

Post by srid68 »

Yes it is possible as long as you can overcome the initial difficulties and please don't quit your Job or take unnecessary risk.

I was 29 years old when i changed from Mechanical Engineer to Software Engineer after just a 3 months study of programming in C in Singapore after I had emigrated to Singapore.

I was 43 years (2 years back) old when i decided to create my own product based company and decided to do the full coding for it individually (Foolishly) without any major experience in product development (I had enormous knowledge of what to do as a Senior Project Manager, less knowledge on how to do and did not have much practice in doing it (Programming))

Programming is hard but it gives you unlimited happiness once you overcome the initial frustrations. If you want to experience the joy of building something with your own hands as well as the sorrow of failure because it is not working as you expect, just go to a beach and build a Sand Castle near the water. You will experience the Joy of completing your Sand Castle and the sorrow of destruction of the Sand Castle by the water and the ultimate satisfaction of protecting your Sand Castle from the Vagaries of Nature.

The Joy of Programming comes from the Problem Solving aspects of Master Building (Planning, Designing, Tuning) and the pain comes from the Brick laying (Typing, Debugging, Testing) of the Implementation. Unfortunately Brick laying is an Ocean littered with multiple languages, frameworks, ides etc. Hence if you have an Objective to your learning Programming, you will easily overcome the initial difficulty in learning programming. Eg. The objective for your case can be create a website/mobile app to sell or display something. From this objective, you can measure your progress as well as choose appropriate multiple languages to master to achieve your objectives.

If you want help, please feel free to send mail to me.

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#57

Post by mping »

Yes, yes, yes! Like some guys said, you must enjoy it. It's the key to success. Also, if you have enough blessings to find a mentor, that would really make it easier! There's a huge difference between programming (hacking), engineering (requires study) and computer science (easier with a compsci degree). You want to be a hacker, ie, to tinker with programming until you know enough for someone to pay you. That's what most of us do anyway.

To keep you inspired, I know people from all walks of life who have become very good at programming (and related). Drop me a line if you want, I'll be happy to help.

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#58

Post by talmir »

rouan wrote: post #46

I think you should learn processing and arduino, possibly before starting into web. There are already a lot of web developers, and not enough visual/electronic opensource devs. To get started download and run http://processing.org/ Paste in this code and click run. Start messing around and start learning if, while, functions etc. -------------------------------------------- void setup() { size(640,480); background(15…

I would rather point him in the direction of a pic microcontroller, straight AVR (without the arduino middleman) or maybe even one of the cortex boards out there. Arduino has been made too "fool proof" with external libraries and hand-holding to be any more valuable for learning programming than the average hello world programming tutorial.

Re: Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?

#60

Post by cpursley »

callmeed wrote: post #30

Most definitely. Go through one of Zed Shaws books ( http://learncodethehardway.org ), probably python or ruby. Then from there look into a web framework while still doing exercises (like project Euler). All the while look for something simple you can write that would help you at your current unrelated career. Even as simple as a "to-do list for accountants". Put it on Github. Email me if you have questions or want t…

"look into a web framework while still doing exercises"

Yes, yes, yes. This helps bind the what your learning with something actionable.

I recommend the Zed Shaw Ruby book in conjunction with building small Sinatra apps since it's so simple.

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