I also started coding full-time / professionally in my teens, getting close to 40 now. It worked pretty well for me, but I wouldn't really recommend it to some

I also started coding full-time / professionally in my teens, getting close to 40 now. It worked pretty well for me, but I wouldn't really recommend it to someone else now. In the late 90s and 00s, there so much potential, VC money, high salaries to be made for getting anything working, and very little nonsense to deal with in terms of JIRA, frameworks, CI, etc, etc. I see that the field is rather commoditized and "mature" now, much less enjoyable day-to-day work battling against frameworks and politics. Also, I feel that experience as a software developer doesn't really compound as well as, say, being a lawyer, accountant, doctor, or business owner. Once you have about 5-10+ years experience, you're really only as good as your last 5-10 years or so, and what you were doing before that has no value to anyone. If you look at job ads, you'll see people looking for 2 years experience, 5 years, 7 years... and that's about it. Nobody really values or will pay a premium for 15 years or 20 years of experience, the way they would for a doctor, professor or lawyer. There are a few exceptions in tech, if you write your own language or framework, or books, and moving up into management, but those aren't easy to achieve. If I had my time again, I'd pick a field or endeavor where experience compounds better, like the professions or being a business owner.