| I never went to college at all and have had (still have) similar feelings of unstable CS foundations. Some things that have helped me: 1. I historically treated programming purely as a means to an end (for income/work, for business ideas, etc.) and this really inhibited my joy for the craft. After a bit of a burnout, I decided to finally embrace it as a "passion" and have since begun learning things I'm intrinsically interested in–3d graphics, operating systems, webgpu, and others. 2. One part of being invigorated is being around others who are invigorated. I've recently applied to a hacker retreat at Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/), so that I can meet and be surrounded by other hackers who pursue programming out of love for the craft itself. Even if this doesn't go through, I plan on finding other communities related to my sub-interests and learning alongside them. 3. Good online courses (whether paid or free) can be really effective at giving you a lay of the land for a given topic. Not too long ago I bought & went through a video course on 3d graphics (https://pikuma.com/courses/learn-3d-computer-graphics-progra...), which let me build a 3d renderer entirely from scratch in C (https://rmshin.github.io/3d-renderer-wasm/). Now I'm learning webgpu on my own through https://webgpufundamentals.org/, but I wouldn't be able to do so if not for the knowledge I gained through doing the video course. 4. From my experience, in order to upskill in programming (and anything else) there is no substitute for putting in the raw hours. This is why I mentioned the importance of intrinsic motivation in the first point, since it's hard to put in long hours for something that doesn't excite you. I realise you have a family (I don't) so this might really be the biggest barrier for you. If you can afford it, I'd highly recommend taking 2-3 months off to invest full-time in upskilling. Otherwise it'll be much trickier, but maybe possible if you can find a great community who you can learn alongside on a regular basis. Lastly, I'd be more than happy to connect and chat about programming & self-learning if you don't have anyone around you–email is in profile :) Best of luck! |