| I got my first internship as a developer in my late 20s, so like you didn't have a formal computer science education. There isn't any right way but this was my path. You aren't too old! Keep in mind competing against 22 year olds for a job means you're also competing against many who have never held a real job yet, don't understand anything about professionalism, or have never had to wake up before 10AM on a daily basis, etc. I honestly think the main concern is salary. You will almost certainly need to be flexible as you are starting from the bottom. You also may need to work to ensure that employers know you won't be too expensive to hire. The first programming I did was Excel formulas and then SQL queries which I was fortunately able to learn how to do at work (I was in a non-technical role at a software product company), so this was more or less paid training. I then got into learning some basic Linux commands. I was able to further dip my toes in by taking two programming classes online at a local state university, Intro to Programming with Java and Intro to Shell Scripting. I think these classes were about $1,000 each, which is a lot, but still a lot less than a bootcamp and didn't require me to quit my job. (I personally think Java is a great place to start programming but I don't know if this view is shared among most) After that I finally had the courage to quit my job, attend a web dev focused bootcamp, and I started my first job about four months after that. |