Hey there! I'm in much the same boat. I have to admit I'm rather relieved reading your post because at least I'm not the only one who is rapidly developing an

Hey there! I'm in much the same boat. I have to admit I'm rather relieved reading your post because at least I'm not the only one who is rapidly developing an inferiority complex here ;) For my part, I'm 28 with a Philosophy degree and currently in a junior role at a late stage startup. I'm not a developer, more like "guy who hacks together Perl and queries MySQL all day". So, you at least have an edge on me - for what little that's worth! In fact, stepping back to take stock of what you do in fact have might help. I realize it's not much consolation to know you're neither homeless, politically oppressed or living in a war zone - but keeping that perspective has helped me through some moments of self-doubt and pity. I totally know what you're saying about having no excuses with all the free and accessible information out there. Believe it or not, I find the plethora of choice a little crippling in its own way. When I spend 5 weeks debating which language to learn, and 5 days actually trying to learn a language - there's clearly something wrong! I don't know where you are in your life, but it might be worth considering a bold leap. I've seen a few programming boot camps promoted here on HN - one in the Bay Area and the other in Chicago. If you're between jobs, this might be something to consider. Dev Bootcamp : http://devbootcamp.com/apply http://devbootcamp.com/apply Code Academy : http://codeacademy.org/ http://codeacademy.org/ I know how incredibly difficult it is to find the time and motivation to work on a side project. In fact, if you're looking for a learning partner - I'd certainly welcome it. I'm currenly interested in the following : Python, Perl, Django, Dancer, Ruby, Groovy, Rails/Grails, JS, coffeescript, design principles, NoSQL, Big Data, Hadoop. I can be reached @ esoteric.doktrin at gmail. Good luck - keep calm and carry on, as they say.