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That's great that this is getting upvoted at HN. I started studying software development last November, at the age of 37. A few times, in my own and other peopl

by soneca 10y ago

That's great that this is getting upvoted at HN. I started studying software development last November, at the age of 37. A few times, in my own and other people's posts stating that we are learning to code, there was more negativity in the comments than I would expect from HN. It is always a mix of: "quit now, it take lots of years to become a developer worth of its name", "don't do it, software development is not the glamorous job you think, it's awful" and "give it up, you just won't be hired for a good job that easily". An impression I often have is that there are developers who have some kind of resentment reaction to the "everyone can/should learn to code". Like new kids sneaking in your own private club. Outsiders trying to be like you. There is only one type of developer: that kid that started to code when he was 12. All others are impostors and wannabes. I'm glad that there is this support sentiment for stories like this as well.

wccrawford 10y ago
It does take a number of years to get enough skill to make great money at it. However, if you have an aptitude for it, you can get a low-paying job (still way more than minimum wage) pretty quickly, so I think it's an investment that pays off rather quickly. If you don't have an aptitude for it, well... I dunno that it would ever work out no matter what, so I guess there's not much point in talking about that? But like most things, you have no idea if you have an aptitude for it before you try it. I do recommend that everyone learn to code. I also recommend that they learn to draw, play music, manage people, and many other skills. It'll make you well-rounded and give you a chance to find out what you really like and excel at, and I've found that most skills are useful in ways that you didn't expect, and you'll use them forever.
- lexandstuff 10y ago
  In my limited experience, you don't need to have an "aptitude" for programming to get good at it. It just requires a lot of time and patience.
  - greenmana 10y ago
    Many are too easy to give up on things on the excuse that they're not talented or have "aptitude", be it programming or playing an instrument etc. Most complicated skills require a lot to develop, and the ones with patience and persistence often do better than those with just more talent.
  - mod 10y ago
    Totally agree. People tend to confuse the issues of aptitude or ability with the results of dedication and practice. I learned how to play pool and my skill level increased very rapidly. People thought I was just "a natural," when in fact I just deliberately practiced (not just played) a couple of thousand hours in a relatively short time period (a year or so).
- johanneskanybal 10y ago
  That's asuming all other skills you have acquired so far in your life has no synergy with your new programming skills! Hardly common for someone starting out at 30+.
  - wccrawford 10y ago
    I'm not sure why you say that? I didn't assume that at all. But if you're not good at programming, it won't matter how good you are at something else if you're trying to get a programming job. If you're even a little good at programming, practically anything else will synergize with it. My favorite Junior Programmer got hired because she claimed "good business sense" during the interview, along with some programming skill she had picked up in her personal time. She's a really good programmer now, and fits in great with a team because of that business sense.
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  I've had many job titles (and only once was formally titled as a "software engineer") but I keep on doing SW development in some form no matter what job I have. There are many people that are like me who carve out a niche for themselves doing what you software folks would call "domain work" but we manage to also fold-in the creation of software, systems integration, and other stuff that blurs boundaries. My job always ends up being radically different from my job description. I think that for older folks (like me) this is an excellent way to get into software development: leverage your domain expertise with ever-increasing programming and automation. That way you get a chance to learn on the job doing real things and you DON'T have to "start over" and compete with 20-somethings. Unfortunately, however, this path leads to "lone-wolf" roles where you don't have organic interaction with others doing the same things. I always feel like an outsider when talking to "actual" software engineers and have to spend a lot effort to gain their trust and adapt to their jargon. Like you, I do believe there's a binary distribution for programming aptitude. People either get it and love it or they don't and are indifferent/hate it. Their major in college has almost nothing to do with programming aptitude, so its not surprising that one can "live" an entirely different career path but discover software development in mid/late career.
UK-AL 10y ago
All those arguments have elements of truth in them. You probably won't be a development job with a large amount of responsibility any time soon as you build up your skills. You will be fairly junior for quite a few years, and you will have to actively have to develop yourself to move on to be better jobs. Software development has been glamorized by the media, yet the vast majority of programming jobs are pretty boring crud business applications. About as interesting as book keeping or filing invoices. If you accept those things, and still feel interested then yeah sure become a developer. It's not about stopping people becoming developers, its about giving realistic views of development so they aren't disappointed when they switch.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Being a junior developer is at least as much fun as being a senior developer, I think. Whereas the senior developer often has more latitude to do what they want, for the junior developer everything is new and exciting. It also usually takes a few years before you get into the politics side of the job (which can be surprisingly frustrating). Just a few things I would like an aspiring developer (of any age) to know before they really commit to the job: - It's all about the details. Huge amounts of details. Every non-programmer around you will wonder what the big fuss is, but you have to deal with things that nobody else ever thinks about. Often you can take criticism for appearing to over think things, even when you know that you've barely thought out half of what you need. If you get it wrong, everybody will similarly criticise you (because hindsight is 20/20). - You need to be able to concentrate deeply every day. Most other common jobs require nowhere near the level of sustained concentration that programming does. Especially as you get older, you need to treat your body well so that you are able to perform at work. I've seen quite a few people wreck themselves in their off time and end up without a job. On the other hand, non-programmers at work have no idea how hard you have to think all day and won't be able to relate. - Nobody outside your industry will understand what you do at work. A few things you do (like I made a web page) will be things that other people can see and relate to, but the vast majority will not be. Sometimes you will go years doing things that are very important behind the scenes but that no end user will ever understand. - The job attracts people who are slightly obsessive, highly intelligent, and are OK if other people don't relate to them. Not everybody is like that, but because you have to be OK dealing with mountains of details without making mistakes, you have to concentrate all day, and nobody understands what you do... well it comes with the territory. Frequently the cultural norms on teams with these kinds of people is quite different than those in other jobs. Not worse (and from the point of view of many, like myself, decidedly better), but it's different and I've seen people react badly to it. I see this changing as programming is getting more mainstream, but the old ways still persist. - There are very few objective measures for success. It's easy to deceive yourself into thinking you are great. It's easy for others to push you down so that you feel like crap. It's easy for people to fail dramatically and have it celebrated as a success by management. It's easy for people to succeed triumphantly and to seen as failures by management. It's doubly easy for management to simply always assign tasks that are impossible to accomplish. The reason to be a programmer is because you want to program. It doesn't matter what age. It doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter how much you get paid. But it's a difficult job and people should know that coming in.
kdamken 10y ago
That's such a joke. Anyone with the time can learn what they need to know in under a year and so long as they have the interviewing skills and a portfolio showing they can do it, they can easily get a salaried position somewhere. Will it be at google? Probably not. But who cares? You'll still be making good money doing something interesting. That's more than a lot of people can hope for.
matwood 10y ago
Ignore the naysayers. A good friend of mine that I met in undergrad was in his 30s. He had quit a job managing a grocery store and went to school for CS. We have worked together off and on throughout the years, and he was always a very solid engineer (I'd work with him again). He's director of engineering at a decent sized company now. I think the key for an older person is to embrace the skills they have, and apply them to software. Finally, I'm of the camp that anyone can become passable at most anything if they have the drive. Software is no exception. Becoming great at something is a different story because it requires many variables to line up perfectly.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  that's commendable, especially since a grocery manager can make a very good living in an affluent area (it is a pretty demanding management position after all, with P&L, scheduling, logistics, distributor and vendor, payroll, 'up-management', probably even real estate related responsibilities). i'm sure it was pretty good experience for his current job.
randomdata 10y ago
> An impression I often have is that there are developers who have some kind of resentment reaction to the "everyone can/should learn to code". Absolutely. The benefits developers enjoy in the workplace (decent pay, ease of finding work, etc.) are directly a result of relatively few having the necessary ability to do the job. More people with ability means more competition, which starts to erode those benefits. These are benefits that anyone is keen to lose. The "everyone should learn to code" movement pushed by the big tech firms squarely targeted at reducing their labour costs, and there is concern that it will actually succeed once it has had enough time to come to fruition. The reaction you have experienced seems quite expected, but not for the reasons you were thinking. I would even suggest that it is basic human nature to try and mitigate the competition, and not just within the workplace (romantic relationships being another example).
watwut 10y ago
On one hand, it is supposed to take years. On the other, you are not supposed to be able to get a job if you are not junior just out of school. A lot of it is much easier then people make it out to be and quite a lot seniors know much less then they pretend to know. At least, that is my long term observation. A lot of the "it is too difficult you aint got no chance" is just habitual posturing - if it is difficult then I look smarter. Whether job is awful or not depends a lot on where exactly you work. The worst parts of the job are related to internal politics - whether between development team itself or between development and management or even development team and customer. It is bad when team believe you are lazy unless you work 80 hours a week and dont even try to organize things so that the work would be possible within normal working time (e.g. late meetings, expectation of instant mail answer etc). It is bad when developers fight over who is going to be the lead. It is bad when another developer insist on having everything his way and micromanages or badmount people behind backs. It is bad when there is a mess (e.g. no common standards) and no leadership. None of that is something that you could not encounter in any other profession. It tend to be somewhat bad in agile teams, since those do not have clear responsibilities to team members (leading to either constant power struggle or strongly enforced conformity). However, as a new kid on the block, you wont have opinions all that much anyway, so you should be fine.
- sverige 10y ago
  >>The worst parts of the job are related to internal politics This is such a frequent comment on HN that it makes me think I really ought to pursue coding as a career to take me into retirement. I've always been very good at office politics and that skill has generally benefited me. Most people are really terrible at using office politics for their long-term benefit, and I have noticed that technical people tend to be especially bad at it. In addition to having good knowledge and experience in a few other domains (insurance, finance, customer service), I've had management experience in all of them. <s> Maybe I could become a manager who makes great money by creating unreasonable, uninformed demands and impeding real progress. </s> I completed a Udacity course in Python a few years ago but haven't had time to use it since then. It has seemed that maybe I missed the window because of age, but maybe I haven't.
jorgeleo 10y ago
One of the reasons why it can take years is because the intellectual development required to succeed needs a certain level of emotional maturity, something that the younger people does not have, shown in the negativity in the comments and their lack of quality. On the other hand, in theory, an older person has that emotional maturity that yields the intellectual development. So something that might take years for a young guy to learn, it can take weeks for an older guy to understand. When creating software, professional development shows in the ability to tackle more and more complex problems. Learning the latest framework is secondary to that. And that concept is scary for some people, just look at the type of questions that some post in quora about the topic. Bottom line, don't worry about your age, sometimes older is better. Don't worry about people negativity, in Spanish, there is a saying: let the dogs bark, it means we are walking.
magic_beans 10y ago
This is a dumb question, but what stack do you use as a "software developer"? I'm a front-end developer who works heavily on javascript web apps, but I have a hard time describing myself as a "software developer".
- soneca 10y ago
  I basically studying javascript to become a front-end developer :) (also some NodeJS and Sequelize/SQLite to be able to create functional projects) I just assumed it is the right name for the profession when there is no need to enter the details of what stack and specific function I want to specialize. No idea it was "charged" somehow.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Why do you have a hard time with it? Front-end code is definitely software; you're definitely developing it, ergo... If you call yourself a software developer and list javascript and a couple of front-end-y frameworks/packages, no one will blink and accuse you of lying or not being a "real" developer. You are. Don't fall prey to imposter syndrome.
rhapsodic 10y ago
>That's great that this is getting upvoted at HN. I started studying software development last November, at the age of 37. A few times, in my own and other people's posts stating that we are learning to code, there was more negativity in the comments than I would expect from HN. Ignore the naysayers. I started to teach myself programming around my 35th birthday. About a year and half later, at the age of 36.5 years, I got my first professional programming position. It was nothing sexy. It was doing maintenance programming on LOB applications in a corporate IT shop. But it got my foot in the door. And I kept on teaching myself, absorbing as much I could about every technology I encountered. My career has been on an upward trajectory ever since.

by soneca 10y ago

wccrawford 10y ago

It does take a number of years to get enough skill to make great money at it. However, if you have an aptitude for it, you can get a low-paying job (still way more than minimum wage) pretty quickly, so I think it's an investment that pays off rather quickly. If you don't have an aptitude for it, well... I dunno that it would ever work out no matter what, so I guess there's not much point in talking about that? But like most things, you have no idea if you have an aptitude for it before you try it. I do recommend that everyone learn to code. I also recommend that they learn to draw, play music, manage people, and many other skills. It'll make you well-rounded and give you a chance to find out what you really like and excel at, and I've found that most skills are useful in ways that you didn't expect, and you'll use them forever.

lexandstuff 10y ago
In my limited experience, you don't need to have an "aptitude" for programming to get good at it. It just requires a lot of time and patience.
- greenmana 10y ago
  Many are too easy to give up on things on the excuse that they're not talented or have "aptitude", be it programming or playing an instrument etc. Most complicated skills require a lot to develop, and the ones with patience and persistence often do better than those with just more talent.
- mod 10y ago
  Totally agree. People tend to confuse the issues of aptitude or ability with the results of dedication and practice. I learned how to play pool and my skill level increased very rapidly. People thought I was just "a natural," when in fact I just deliberately practiced (not just played) a couple of thousand hours in a relatively short time period (a year or so).
johanneskanybal 10y ago
That's asuming all other skills you have acquired so far in your life has no synergy with your new programming skills! Hardly common for someone starting out at 30+.
- wccrawford 10y ago
  I'm not sure why you say that? I didn't assume that at all. But if you're not good at programming, it won't matter how good you are at something else if you're trying to get a programming job. If you're even a little good at programming, practically anything else will synergize with it. My favorite Junior Programmer got hired because she claimed "good business sense" during the interview, along with some programming skill she had picked up in her personal time. She's a really good programmer now, and fits in great with a team because of that business sense.
crispyambulance 10y ago
I've had many job titles (and only once was formally titled as a "software engineer") but I keep on doing SW development in some form no matter what job I have. There are many people that are like me who carve out a niche for themselves doing what you software folks would call "domain work" but we manage to also fold-in the creation of software, systems integration, and other stuff that blurs boundaries. My job always ends up being radically different from my job description. I think that for older folks (like me) this is an excellent way to get into software development: leverage your domain expertise with ever-increasing programming and automation. That way you get a chance to learn on the job doing real things and you DON'T have to "start over" and compete with 20-somethings. Unfortunately, however, this path leads to "lone-wolf" roles where you don't have organic interaction with others doing the same things. I always feel like an outsider when talking to "actual" software engineers and have to spend a lot effort to gain their trust and adapt to their jargon. Like you, I do believe there's a binary distribution for programming aptitude. People either get it and love it or they don't and are indifferent/hate it. Their major in college has almost nothing to do with programming aptitude, so its not surprising that one can "live" an entirely different career path but discover software development in mid/late career.

UK-AL 10y ago

All those arguments have elements of truth in them. You probably won't be a development job with a large amount of responsibility any time soon as you build up your skills. You will be fairly junior for quite a few years, and you will have to actively have to develop yourself to move on to be better jobs. Software development has been glamorized by the media, yet the vast majority of programming jobs are pretty boring crud business applications. About as interesting as book keeping or filing invoices. If you accept those things, and still feel interested then yeah sure become a developer. It's not about stopping people becoming developers, its about giving realistic views of development so they aren't disappointed when they switch.

mikekchar 10y ago
Being a junior developer is at least as much fun as being a senior developer, I think. Whereas the senior developer often has more latitude to do what they want, for the junior developer everything is new and exciting. It also usually takes a few years before you get into the politics side of the job (which can be surprisingly frustrating). Just a few things I would like an aspiring developer (of any age) to know before they really commit to the job: - It's all about the details. Huge amounts of details. Every non-programmer around you will wonder what the big fuss is, but you have to deal with things that nobody else ever thinks about. Often you can take criticism for appearing to over think things, even when you know that you've barely thought out half of what you need. If you get it wrong, everybody will similarly criticise you (because hindsight is 20/20). - You need to be able to concentrate deeply every day. Most other common jobs require nowhere near the level of sustained concentration that programming does. Especially as you get older, you need to treat your body well so that you are able to perform at work. I've seen quite a few people wreck themselves in their off time and end up without a job. On the other hand, non-programmers at work have no idea how hard you have to think all day and won't be able to relate. - Nobody outside your industry will understand what you do at work. A few things you do (like I made a web page) will be things that other people can see and relate to, but the vast majority will not be. Sometimes you will go years doing things that are very important behind the scenes but that no end user will ever understand. - The job attracts people who are slightly obsessive, highly intelligent, and are OK if other people don't relate to them. Not everybody is like that, but because you have to be OK dealing with mountains of details without making mistakes, you have to concentrate all day, and nobody understands what you do... well it comes with the territory. Frequently the cultural norms on teams with these kinds of people is quite different than those in other jobs. Not worse (and from the point of view of many, like myself, decidedly better), but it's different and I've seen people react badly to it. I see this changing as programming is getting more mainstream, but the old ways still persist. - There are very few objective measures for success. It's easy to deceive yourself into thinking you are great. It's easy for others to push you down so that you feel like crap. It's easy for people to fail dramatically and have it celebrated as a success by management. It's easy for people to succeed triumphantly and to seen as failures by management. It's doubly easy for management to simply always assign tasks that are impossible to accomplish. The reason to be a programmer is because you want to program. It doesn't matter what age. It doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter how much you get paid. But it's a difficult job and people should know that coming in.

kdamken 10y ago

That's such a joke. Anyone with the time can learn what they need to know in under a year and so long as they have the interviewing skills and a portfolio showing they can do it, they can easily get a salaried position somewhere. Will it be at google? Probably not. But who cares? You'll still be making good money doing something interesting. That's more than a lot of people can hope for.

matwood 10y ago

Ignore the naysayers. A good friend of mine that I met in undergrad was in his 30s. He had quit a job managing a grocery store and went to school for CS. We have worked together off and on throughout the years, and he was always a very solid engineer (I'd work with him again). He's director of engineering at a decent sized company now. I think the key for an older person is to embrace the skills they have, and apply them to software. Finally, I'm of the camp that anyone can become passable at most anything if they have the drive. Software is no exception. Becoming great at something is a different story because it requires many variables to line up perfectly.

beachstartup 10y ago
that's commendable, especially since a grocery manager can make a very good living in an affluent area (it is a pretty demanding management position after all, with P&L, scheduling, logistics, distributor and vendor, payroll, 'up-management', probably even real estate related responsibilities). i'm sure it was pretty good experience for his current job.

randomdata 10y ago

> An impression I often have is that there are developers who have some kind of resentment reaction to the "everyone can/should learn to code". Absolutely. The benefits developers enjoy in the workplace (decent pay, ease of finding work, etc.) are directly a result of relatively few having the necessary ability to do the job. More people with ability means more competition, which starts to erode those benefits. These are benefits that anyone is keen to lose. The "everyone should learn to code" movement pushed by the big tech firms squarely targeted at reducing their labour costs, and there is concern that it will actually succeed once it has had enough time to come to fruition. The reaction you have experienced seems quite expected, but not for the reasons you were thinking. I would even suggest that it is basic human nature to try and mitigate the competition, and not just within the workplace (romantic relationships being another example).

watwut 10y ago

On one hand, it is supposed to take years. On the other, you are not supposed to be able to get a job if you are not junior just out of school. A lot of it is much easier then people make it out to be and quite a lot seniors know much less then they pretend to know. At least, that is my long term observation. A lot of the "it is too difficult you aint got no chance" is just habitual posturing - if it is difficult then I look smarter. Whether job is awful or not depends a lot on where exactly you work. The worst parts of the job are related to internal politics - whether between development team itself or between development and management or even development team and customer. It is bad when team believe you are lazy unless you work 80 hours a week and dont even try to organize things so that the work would be possible within normal working time (e.g. late meetings, expectation of instant mail answer etc). It is bad when developers fight over who is going to be the lead. It is bad when another developer insist on having everything his way and micromanages or badmount people behind backs. It is bad when there is a mess (e.g. no common standards) and no leadership. None of that is something that you could not encounter in any other profession. It tend to be somewhat bad in agile teams, since those do not have clear responsibilities to team members (leading to either constant power struggle or strongly enforced conformity). However, as a new kid on the block, you wont have opinions all that much anyway, so you should be fine.

sverige 10y ago
>>The worst parts of the job are related to internal politics This is such a frequent comment on HN that it makes me think I really ought to pursue coding as a career to take me into retirement. I've always been very good at office politics and that skill has generally benefited me. Most people are really terrible at using office politics for their long-term benefit, and I have noticed that technical people tend to be especially bad at it. In addition to having good knowledge and experience in a few other domains (insurance, finance, customer service), I've had management experience in all of them. <s> Maybe I could become a manager who makes great money by creating unreasonable, uninformed demands and impeding real progress. </s> I completed a Udacity course in Python a few years ago but haven't had time to use it since then. It has seemed that maybe I missed the window because of age, but maybe I haven't.

jorgeleo 10y ago

One of the reasons why it can take years is because the intellectual development required to succeed needs a certain level of emotional maturity, something that the younger people does not have, shown in the negativity in the comments and their lack of quality. On the other hand, in theory, an older person has that emotional maturity that yields the intellectual development. So something that might take years for a young guy to learn, it can take weeks for an older guy to understand. When creating software, professional development shows in the ability to tackle more and more complex problems. Learning the latest framework is secondary to that. And that concept is scary for some people, just look at the type of questions that some post in quora about the topic. Bottom line, don't worry about your age, sometimes older is better. Don't worry about people negativity, in Spanish, there is a saying: let the dogs bark, it means we are walking.

magic_beans 10y ago

This is a dumb question, but what stack do you use as a "software developer"? I'm a front-end developer who works heavily on javascript web apps, but I have a hard time describing myself as a "software developer".

soneca 10y ago
I basically studying javascript to become a front-end developer :) (also some NodeJS and Sequelize/SQLite to be able to create functional projects) I just assumed it is the right name for the profession when there is no need to enter the details of what stack and specific function I want to specialize. No idea it was "charged" somehow.
sokoloff 10y ago
Why do you have a hard time with it? Front-end code is definitely software; you're definitely developing it, ergo... If you call yourself a software developer and list javascript and a couple of front-end-y frameworks/packages, no one will blink and accuse you of lying or not being a "real" developer. You are. Don't fall prey to imposter syndrome.

rhapsodic 10y ago

>That's great that this is getting upvoted at HN. I started studying software development last November, at the age of 37. A few times, in my own and other people's posts stating that we are learning to code, there was more negativity in the comments than I would expect from HN. Ignore the naysayers. I started to teach myself programming around my 35th birthday. About a year and half later, at the age of 36.5 years, I got my first professional programming position. It was nothing sexy. It was doing maintenance programming on LOB applications in a corporate IT shop. But it got my foot in the door. And I kept on teaching myself, absorbing as much I could about every technology I encountered. My career has been on an upward trajectory ever since.