[hnuser987654321]

I don't think you are too old. Many of my coworkers had erratic, non-technical careers (construction, military, fireman, etc) until their 30s.

Just prove you can solve business problems using code.

If I were to get into software again, I would completely ignore the hype and choose a robust set of technologies and exclusively master them. Namely, Java (Spring Boot), MySql, Jquery. These are some of the most mature and popular technologies available - you can build anything with these. After you have built this foundation and found a job, then you can move onto other technologies.

Create a github if you don't already. Pick a project (bonus points if it solves a real problem in your life). If you can't think of anything, build a TODO-list.

[jnbiche]

> Jquery

As a frontend developer (who's also old), I'm going to argue strongly against jQuery. I like jQuery. It's had its place. But it's on the way out. Your time would be much better spent learning vanilla JS (preferably ES5+ES6 but even just ES5 would be much better use of time than jQuery).

You can easily do anything with modern vanilla JS (and modern browser APIs like `document.querySelector` and `fetch` than you can with jQuery.

Otherwise, good advice, except I'm guessing you mean a "TODO List" app, not just a TODO list (and the concept of a todo list app may not be apparent to a non-dev, so: https://github.com/themaxsandelin/todo).

Also, I agree that the OP is not too old. After working for a few years as a software developer up to the dotcom bust, I went into health research for a while before returning to software. But I did manage to frequently use programming in my jobs, which made it easier to get back in. So I'd recommend trying to find a way to use some programming in the lab you work in before trying to switch, along with putting together some sample projects in Github.

Just be aware that you will run into ageism, and if you happen to deal with serious illness (as some of us do as we get older) and are out of work for more than a brief amount of time, that will be another big strike against you to overcome in the industry. You probably wouldn't face those to the same extent in research labs.

[tluyben2]

> But it's on the way out.

In hip and trendy companies; every company I work with (banks, insurers) are using JQuery like it is the best thing ever and never heard about React or ES5. It will live for a lot longer than Silicon Valley thinks.

[jnbiche]

I'm not in silicon valley, and I'm not in a start-up. jQuery is on the way out in all but the most archaic companies (many of the ones you mentioned are still struggling with how to maintain their Cobol code bases).

[linsomniac]

My company has a ton of legacy (significant parts of our site are in ColdFusion, for example), and jQuery is on the way out here. So... It's gotta be on the way out. :-)

[droptablemain]

100% agree about jQuery. Even ES5 can easily replace jQuery these days and do so in a much more performant way.

[sodafountan]

As others have mentioned I wouldn't even bother with jQuery at this point. Knowing a little bit of jQuery and why it was important for its time is good, but I'd replace that in-depth jQuery knowledge with React.

React will teach you modern javascript that developers are using today, position you to be an immediate impact person on most React teams and as you dig into the internals of how it all works will make you a pretty good javascript developer in time.

Java is fine, but I'd also argue that C# might be a bit better, it seems like at least in my immediate area C# is more popular than Java at this point and the core concepts are obviously transferable between languages. I think C# has the edge with its tooling too, you'll bang your head against the keyboard a lot more trying to configure Java IDE's and servers than you will with Visual Studio and maybe Azure for instance.

[james_s_tayler]

These days Java is dead simple if you're using Spring Boot. Bonus points if you use Gradle as a build system instead of Maven. Even easier.

It used to be a pain in the ass before the Spring Boot days. These days it's buttery smooth to get up and running. In fact, it's significantly easier than .NET Core startup.cs way of doing things tbh.

Having said that, I recently switched over to C# as it's just got slightly better features as a language and .NET Core is pretty nice to work with compared to the old .NET framework. It's updated and more modernized. Really enjoying it.

Javas ecosystem has some better offerings and usually all for free. Compared with C# where many libraries that you want to use are commercial, so you can't just use them without really thinking about it. Since MS embraced open source there is definitely a positive shift in the community and ecosystem but it will take time.