[iepathos]

You can switch as long as you have a strong aptitude for logic, math, and probably language. There are some comments here about ageism and how hard it can be, but honestly, in my experience, good engineers just care about working with other good engineers. Your age, sex, and race are irrelevant to most techies I know when it comes to work. If you can program well, they'll appreciate you and working with the code you produce. I know people who have gone through a few months of code bootcamp and are able to get well paying jobs quickly after that. A lot of phd's have been switching to programming careers these days cause it pays way better and has a lot more job demand than w/e their scientific fields of study were and many of them are in the 30-40 range. There is major talent shortage in software engineering so if you get just ok at it recruiters will be knocking at your door with jobs and if you get good you'll have your pick of jobs.