[trcollinson]

To be frank with you, start working, hard. This is going to be your largest huddle. When you read this message, what were you doing? On Facebook (or some other social media)? On some game? Watching your giant Netflix queue? I don't know what it was but it probably wasn't coding. And if it was, then good! You're already on your way.

I honestly don't mean any of that to be mocking. I am just saying, a lot of people fail because of distractions from their primary goal. So now you have to ask yourself, what are you willing to give up? Are you willing to block out all of those distractions so you can start to learn a new skill? Only you can decide that and only you can make yourself fail if you don't.

Next, start building something. Honestly, you don't need to understand math at some high level to build great software applications. Go pick something and build it. Look at Jennifer Dewalt (http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/). She set out to make one website per day for 180 days and blog about it. Imagine the amount of dedication to complete such a task. And look at how much she learned in that time! Just pick things are build them. Learn. Grow. Start right now.

[_zero]

>I don't know what it was but it probably wasn't coding.

You're right, I wasn't coding.

I waste a lot of time on the internet not being productive, so I'll change this. I signed up for a codecademy account recently, so I'll challenge myself by doing some exercises there daily.

>So now you have to ask yourself, what are you willing to give up?

I think I'm finally ready to give up all of my distractions. I'm getting sick of not making any progress.

>Look at Jennifer Dewalt (http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/).

This is great. I bookmarked her website and I'll check out her work. Maybe I'll do something similar once I feel capable enough to build something.

>To be frank with you, start working, hard.

>Learn. Grow. Start right now.

Thank you :)

[nphyte]

go here http://www.freecodecamp.com/. if you stick through it you'll learn enough to get a job. Also it's not a cakewalk. goodluck

[_zero]

This looks pretty neat. I'll check it out! Thank you.

[kzisme]

Awesome resource for learning it seems!

[yashap]

Agreed with it basically being lots of hard work, and that you have to be very motivated.

I'm currently 29, working as a Software Developer, and also started late. Got my MSc in Oceanography, had some basic programming experience (built basic websites for beer money, some light scientific programming), but not much. Decided I liked the analytics more than the rest of science, and got a job at a SaaS company as a Data Analyst. Really started falling in love with programming quickly there, and did the following: - took online courses like crazy (often waking up early to get some in before work, and more on evenings/weekends when possible) - always took on the most technical tasks at work, where I'd get to write as much Python/R/SQL as possible - started a coding club at work, great for group learning and motivation

After ~2 years of this I had gotten myself to a point where I could legitimately work as a Software Developer, and got a new job as one (at the same company). Stayed in my area of expertise, data science/analytics, but as a developer instead of an analyst.

I wouldn't suggest codeacademy, though. Maybe it's changed since I tried it, but my experience was that they introduced you to a bunch of syntax, but left out most of the fundamentals of how computer science and how to structure programs. I'd much more strongly suggest taking more involved courses. Some of my favourites include (note - bias towards Python, Scala and SQL courses, as that's what I happen to use a lot of):

Intro to Comp Sci (Python) https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-computer-science--cs...

Intro to Web Dev (Python) https://www.udacity.com/course/web-development--cs253

Data Structures and Algos (Python): http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/index...

JS intro: http://eloquentjavascript.net/

Functional programming (Scala): https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun

Reactive programming (Scala): https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive

Good databases courses (boring but good content): https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/2014/SelfPaced/abou...

My personal feeling is that things like codeacademy get you superficial knowledge, like learning to use tools, when what you really want is deeper knowledge about how to build houses, regardless of the tools.