Short answer: yes, of course. A great many programmers are very young, and so I think our industry tends to get pretty myopic when it comes to career arcs, and

Short answer: yes, of course. A great many programmers are very young, and so I think our industry tends to get pretty myopic when it comes to career arcs, and even just time in general. There are many, many professional programmers who have less than 5 years training+experience combined. This isn't to say that more experience and training won't open doors, because it will. But what I am saying is that there's no reason to despair. Consider: if you devoted yourself to reading and working on open-source projects or even some contracting, going to workshops/codeathons, local user groups, and etc., you could built up some expertise and even a pretty decent portfolio of work within a few short years. Give it even just 2-3 years of being disciplined with it, and you could very possibly have more to show for it than some who have been coasting in the industry for far longer. After 3 years, you would be only 31, and you could have a programming career for 20-30 years, if you so desired. Bottom line: you can do it. But you gotta be ready to work hard and jump into things.