im 29 yo. recently lose my job, and thinking about use some of my saving money to school for programming, for the sake of not being homeless, but idk consider of my age, will it helps me in the future to survive if i have a degree on programming.
pardon my english
Luck should be taken into account. Once you are done with your degree, perhaps the market will have recovered a bit, because I’m hearing a lot of negative feedback lately.
edit: If you’re not sure, you can take a peek at this graph of free MIT YouTube courses. Choose something interesting on the right, then figure out where to start on the left to get to your chosen point. Each course can easily take about 100 hours, which sounds a lot, but if you do them you can take that knowledge and more easily extrapolate information in the future.
We just hired a former musician who spent his 20s-30s in a band, and his 40s playing in dive bars.
He took a 2 year bootcamp and he’s currently one of my juniors in his 50s. He told me the salary at the junior level was 2x more than he ever made.
Maybe he’s lucky. But if you’re obsessed with programming, you’ll make it. It’s a tough industry right now. But in two years, who knows? Maybe they’ll be a hiring spree again.
I needed to read this. Thank you.
wow… good little story, thanks dude…
Schooling for programming isn’t super necessary. Programming, at it’s core, is not super difficult. It’s effectively learning how to structure fundamental logic in a way to do what you want and then figure how to do that with the programming language you are using. There are various free resources online to get started.
Once you’ve learned some fundamentals, you can start some random practice project and figure out how to expand it to challenge yourself and learn from practice.
A lot of programming is also experience driven. As you code, you learn better approaches, new capabilities within your programming language, best practices, etc. Looking back at code from when I was first starting, I often find multiple potential improvements in the way I did it at the time.
okay, thanks ill start looking for resources… are there any resources you can recommend for my zero knowledge brain about programming?
pardon my english
A good place to start is the University of Helsinki Java MOOC, it starts from zero knowledge and has lots of practice exercises.
thanks a lot sir… edit : can u tell me why is it good to start on ur link?
It uses a strongly type language so it teaches good practices, it’s based on a widely used language in the industry, it’s a bloody good course that teaches the fundamentals of programming very well. If you learn better with videos, I recommend this course, but it’s not free.
okay sir, ill try with your given links. thanks a lot
Why not getting a job with flexible hours or even something in shifts. This will get you paid rather well and if haven’t got a wife or kids for the moment use your spare time to study.
I’ve known a security guard who only worked nights, very well payed. As nights are call he used it to study.
Many possibilities all depends on your willingness and personal situation. You do not always have to throw money against something to succeed.
Like mentioned in previous posts. You really need the obsession to become great and that will take some years. Do kot expect the big $$ in the beginning.
that is what i planned to do, find some flexible job, while learning to programming…
and idk ive been thinking with my age rn, i dont asks for to much… just enough for survive and maybe for my building pc interest to healing
You’re young. I switched jobs and profession twice already. For me, it was the other way around and back again. Came from programming (10 years) then Linux adminstration (2 years) and decided to do Geography. Studied it and the programming skills helped me there, too.
There is always something you can take with you to the next job or profession.
I wasn’t lucky to get a job where I can use my Geography studies so I am now almost 2 years in web programming. I did not have much experience in the field, but I found a place where my Linux adminstration knowledge is useful and I improved web backend programming skills (PHP) on the job.
Soft skills count, too. Reliablity, ability to work in a team. Recruiters look for those things.
And btw. I got my Linux knowledge initially only from personal unpaid studies and projects in my free time.
wow, from what i read i believe you’re amazing person, thanks for sharing sir… it means a lot
Have a go on your free time and see if you like it. There is an absolute ton of free learning material online. You don’t need to pay anyone.
Most programming jobs (e.g. making web sites) are easy enough for the average person to do, but I think most people would find programming far too tedious and boring to learn.
It’s like law - there’s nothing particularly difficult about it but most people find it incredibly mind numbing to read legal documents.
So I would have a go in your free time first to make sure it is something you could do.
okay, will do… thanks for the advice sir…
What you guys think how AI influences the progress of programming. In two years the profession will look a lot different than today. I’m a designer and even today I’m pretty much able to make apps for myself practically without coding. This will only get simpler with complex apps. I’m not saying they are coded well, but they work. In two years, in less, probably in a few months there will be swarms of ai agents programming the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we won’t need you, the experienced programmers, but how much jobs will there be for new people?
And I know there is a lot of ai hate on lemmy so please spare me with that.
People overestimate the ability of LLMs and programming. It’s very useful at times. I use it sometimes, but I have to be very careful because your can very easily go down a rabbit hole of doing things that are VERY wrong and not industry standard with lots of issues. And if you spot them and try to get the LLM to sort it you often go round in circles in solutions that do not work.
I now mostly only use it to point me in the right direction of something I currently don’t know about, but I make a conscious effort to look at it’s sources rather than taking it’s word for it.
And the other really good use of it is for debugging errors. That I have no qualms with. Errors are usually well documented online with solutions on how to fix them so LLMs mostly know what they’re talking about with them and can point you in the right direction of sorting it out way quicker than trying to find that info yourself due to how shit search engines are now.
Absolutely! At 29, you’re still young, and learning programming can open up many career opportunities. The tech industry values skills more than age, so a degree (or even strong skills from self-learning) can definitely help you build a stable future. Go for it!
okay sir. thank you for your advice
So, I will start by saying “Yes, you can do it. It’s not too late and programming is fun and fulfilling”.
However! One thing my experience has taught me in seeing people approach and bounce off programming is: programming is a fail-til-you-get-it type of endeavour. Your first several years will be littered with broken code, because there are a thousand little things you have to bump up against before you unlock one more puzzle piece.
So! If you go for it, persevere! You aren’t a bad programmer, or a slow learner, because you can’t get your code to work. Every single one of us ran into the same issue, and we just had to push through, learn to Google, and try again until it sorta-kinda works. You in 10 years will be embarrassed by what you write in your first years
In 10 years you’ll be embarrassed by what you write 9 years from now. Coding is an art of continual improvement.
I’m embarrassed with what I wrote last week hahaha!
thanks for the advice and the motivation… its very helpful in my situation
big hug
It’s never too late to start programming. To get a job though you need to show you can get things done. Even if you’re going for junior roles, you’ll benefit from being able to include links to some finished projects on your CV. For most basic entry level it is far far far better to have something that was finished, and works, but isn’t perfect rather than nothing at all.
Don’t put too much trust in so called “certificates” from these schools. A company will, again, be more interested to see what you can do than what pieces of paper you’ve earned. Having said that some courses are good (some are not). Only sink money into it if you have scrutinised the reviews and seen good words about them on here or Reddit or other popular program discussion places. Don’t go off their own testimonials.
If you were willing to be relaxed on salary (if the alternative is indeed homelessness) then you ought to be able to get your toe in the door somewhere. After that don’t feel too loyal, do what you need to, but study and build study and build in your own time and keep yourself out there open to job #2.
Don’t put too much trust in so called “certificates” from these schools.
Absolutely this.
During an interview, an applicant bragged about how he was at the top of his class in computer science and could not stop mentioning his GPA. I turned off my video because I couldn’t stop laughing.
His portfolio was dogshit too.
