[pjgalbraith]

Life is long. I remember when I was finishing primary school there was a lot of emphasis at the time on figuring out what you were going to do career wise. At the time I lived near an old blacksmith I used to visit regularly, he looked exactly how you would imagine a blacksmith to look, long grey beard, always covered in ash, a quietly spoken Vietnam war veteran, he had an awesome studio forge where he worked on commissions. Anyway I remember he said not to worry about it too much he didn't work out what he wanted to do until he was almost 60 year old.

A number of years later one of the developers I worked with had many careers before working as a programmer, he cleaned power plant reactors, lived in Africa as an aid-worked, before eventually settling down and learning to code at around 50 years old. He was a fantastic developer because of his life experience not in spite of it, and moreover a great team member because he could provide some much needed perspective.