[Thriptic]

Medicine is definitely more of an established field than web development, that's true. I would say that if you are going to go into medicine you should know what you are getting into.

The schooling process is incredibly long and expensive if you want to become an MD and specialize beyond being a general practitioner, the hours absolutely suck until you become an attending, and the social capital of physicians is eroding as they are increasingly viewed more as code monkey service providers than intelligent domain experts.

Also the change to pay for performance vs pay for service and the introduction of more PAs and NPs with prescribing power is going to change practice as well to the detriment of MDs. I would say if you are very interested in helping patients then a career change into medicine is worth exploring; otherwise it's not worth it.

If you are more interested in biology vs patient care then perhaps you could consider translational research. There is HUGE demand for programmers in many biomedical engineering labs, research institutes, pharma and biotech, insurance, hospitals etc. I would kill to have an experienced dev to work with in my lab for example as most of the code I get stuck dealing with is utterly dog shit. If what you are seeking is social status, professionalism, and an opportunity to explore biology while making a difference then this might be a good route for you given your existing skill set.