| I played around with a Franklin PC 8088 when I was a kid for a couple years that we had it. I tried BASIC but never got close to my goal of writing a Tic Tac Toe program. Didn't know how to read input. Didn't even know that the "^" on the "^SAVE" menu item at the bottom meant to hold down CTRL, so my "programs" never survived more than the hour or two I tried (mostly in vain) to get something to work. No one in my family or peers really knew much about computers and while the Apple IIe at school were much more impressive, that was just playing trivia games and such. Not writing anything ourselves. It wasn't until I was about 16 that I touched a computer again. Built my own eventually to play DOOM. I didn't know anything "technical" at that point beyond autoexec.bat and... config something. I forget the other one. It wasn't until I was 21 that I did my first real "programming". Which consisted of reading a book on HTML and being paid $5/hr by my father in law to write some truly bad markup while he did the real work. I picked up some books on c#, ASP.NET 1.0, MSSQL Server and did my best to absorb what I could. My father-in-law didn't know/work-with most of that (he did help me figure out some SQL basics though) and I didn't have a peer group or support system or anything. About a year later I had a job paying about as well as Home Depot might writing c#. Almost 20 years later I'm writing Scala and make a good living. I don't say this as advice exactly. Just saying the "you can't start late" stuff is bullshit. I've often regretted not having access to college so I could answer "write a binary tree on the board" questions. So I didn't feel inadequate in those ways. But it hasn't stopped me getting a job and I'm overall pretty satisfied with my career (well... there was a dark time when I attempted to manage that was pretty cringe worthy) and accomplishments. I wish I had something more to offer people who think a career in tech is out of their reach because they couldn't afford college, or they started too late. All I really have to offer is this: Pick up a book. Remember how practically no one actually read a text-book from front to back in grade school? If they had they'd have had a huge advantage right? Pick up a book. Those that say "I learn by doing" will never ever ever be exposed to the same depth or amount of knowledge as you'll get from the condensed, edited brain-on-paper of accomplished authors. Be well read. It's like cheating. And it's cheap. Often even free (Not talking Blogs. Those are mostly only useful for very specific questions/topics; I'm talking about the free Ruby book, or beg for a copy of haskellbook. Or torrent if you must and pay them back for it later). My 2c. |