[NotSammyHagar]

Take a software class at a community college. I had my eye on recruiting interns and new devs at the local community college and I went to the career fare and they said the entire graduating group had already been hired, mostly by microsoft. It's a crazy world with so much demand.

[borkt]

Are you suggesting a local community college only (Santa Rosa Junior College for me) or do remote courses work too? What class specifically should I be taking?

The first year curriculum at Cal Poly was Java at the time, and while cumbersome I did well enough, so I don't exactly need an intro to computer science course. I'd like to jump in to something for people with about a year's experience working with whatever languages are in demand right now. I know I need to learn to learn programming again and I'd be learning all my career if I make the switch down the road, but I'd still like to do it with a language that could get me some freelance work to start building a resume with.

[NotSammyHagar]

I think remote isn't nearly as good as local. Locally you can get connected to companies that are sniffing around the college. Do they have a cs curriculum, I'd go through it step by step. You've probably not had much past "just programming". There's theory of computation, algorithm analysis - being able to do O(n) type calculations on algorithms (to compare choices) it a key interview ability, and it's useful in your job but crucial for 'real' software interviews.

In software engineering, there's using the tools (git, make, c++, dev environment - these days microsoft visual studio code is a free and commonly used dev tools that work s on linux and windows) and coding. But you will eventually need to get past it. Don't approach this as "oh my god, this will take years". Instead start with some programming classes, java or c++ or js or python, and look toward getting to those other classes eventually (theory of computation and algorithm analysis).

Good luck, you can do it.