Seeking Advice for a late in life career change to programming

You didn't say what age you are, but ageism in tech is a thing, you may find a dearth of offers. Some companies are really bad about it - IBM US found a legal loophole they used to rid themselves of older workers. It depends on the country - I'm not aware of any such problem in Canada (I live on the east coast in Nova Scotia).

I would start by looking at three things:
- Do some research on ageism in your area. If you're convinced that's not an issue - or you can relocate somewhere it's not an issue - then continue.
- Try some websites that teach how to code, to get a taste of it without paying anything. There are lots of these, I don't have any specific recommendation.
- I would look at a 2 year college diploma. It's much cheaper than a 4 year university degree program, and I would expect it's much more "get to the point", as colleges are more geared towards employment. Not to mention degrees place too heavy an emphasis on math you'll never use.

Personally, I got a degree, but I did that at 32. If you're nearing sunset as you put it, 4 years sounds like too long.

Programmers are great to work with, but total dics in technical interviews - they see themselves as reverse prison guards, to keep the jerkoffs out. They have a tendency to define a jerkoff as "anyone not as good as them", which is basically everyone. Don't be surprised if technical interviews result in either: a) No response at all after submitting a code test (despite being provably correct with a unit test), or b) A response of "you don't have the skills we need" after an in person interview. For some reason, managers and HR never recognize this. You'll likely to just have to keep trying until someone graciously decides - entirely at random - that you in fact have a useful skill.

Good skills to learn are database skills (most companies use SQL), and web programming (HTML/CSS/JS for front end, HTTP/JSON micro services for back end). Learning both Java and Go for backend would be a good idea, you'll likely end up needing both of them.

Hope that helps Smile | :)

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.