| I missed being a kid prodigy as well. Started programming on C64 in BASIC at age 12. Why I never learned assembly language is beyond me; for what ever reason I don't recall it being on my radar. After high school I went to college for computer science only to drop out after a year and a half and joined the Air Force. But anyways, eventually the search for getting laid and getting drunk gave way to keeping up with programming. I tinkered around with programming while in the AF but didn't do much. The itch to program never left though I ignored it for a LONG time. At 40 I started on a Master's in CS (have a BS in engineering). Graduated at 45. I did remote part time jobs from 45 to 50. Got my first remote full time job at 50 during the middle of Covid in June 2020. I just switched jobs to a major health care org at 52. It is a Java / Spring Boot / Angular position. I was completely honest with them that I hadn't done Java since MS degree (95% of courses were in Java). Never did any Spring Boot and only did one project with Angular 1.0. And they still hired me. After a month I kind of felt over my head so I asked my team lead why they hired me. Her answer was people with some experience expected way too much money and/or they weren't willing to learn. She said I was at least willing to learn. I got a 20% boost to what I was making at the job I left, plus amazing benefits so win-win-win for me. I still have a lot to learn; Spring Boot and Angular seems very heavy to me coming from Python / Flask / HTML / CSS / vanilla JS but it is all starting to come together. Right now my personal interest is Common Lisp. So in the mornings, at night and on weekends I delve into a CL book. It's going slow mainly because I ... SQUIRREL. But whatever, I'm in no big rush. Moral of story: Continuously learning, be willing to learn, be honest to yourself and employers. Play on your strengths, don't deny your weaknesses and work on them. |