[toomanyrichies]

Programming is my 3rd career (I was a travel agent and an ESL teacher before that). I joined a bootcamp when I was 34. People in my bootcamp class who were older than I was were able to find jobs as software engineers, and (at least according to their LinkedIn pages) continue to write code today.

Age discrimination does exist, but so do companies that actively look for age diversity in their junior engineers. Unsurprisingly, success in this field has much more to do with your mental attitude (i.e. fixed vs growth mindset) than with age.

I empathize with your preconceptions about this field (I shared them in my newbie days), but I can't emphasize this enough- I believe that almost anyone with a growth mindset and a certain amount of grit can become a software engineer.

If you acquire the right knowledge and the skills to communicate that knowledge succinctly, it will be easy for you to demonstrate why you'd make a good hire.