I’m learning to code at 56 | Hacker News Reader

I’m learning to code at 56

medium.freecodecamp.com

11 pointsrsgoheen6 comments

>I don’t like activities that don’t pay. I can’t keep on doing something simply for the fun of it.

And, I'm out. As a fellow 50 something I could look past a lack of experience, but I loathe a lack of interest. The only programmers I have learned to avoid are the ones interested in learning just enough to collect a paycheck.

There must have been interest enough to venture into a field that the author knows nothing about.

Secondly, some people are looking for a career change and to them money matters. I know a friend of mine in a similar position who was a phd in physics but now works at walmart due to some poor life choices. Now sober, he wants to learn to code to channel his intellectual prowess and, shockingly, increase his financial freedom.

I think the author was talking about the difficulty in breaking the financial hymn and penetrate the market as a 50 something year old developer.

Well said. I can certainly understand that money matters, and I applaud the effort, but experience has taught me that developers that explain their learning in terms of "If I learn X, then I should be able to coast until retirement" are not the kind of curious, self-motivated people that bring a lot to a project.

That's not really what he's saying, though. He's saying he can't afford to sink a ton of hours into something with no economic upside. Speaking as a 40-something with a number of fixed expenses and steadily-shrinking free time, I can sympathize.

Keep in mind this comes after him saying he loves coding, loves algorithm coding games, etc. I read this as "I want to do this all the time, and the only way I can make that happen is by making it my day job."

I can definitely respect that, though I hope he's ready for the sacrifice I think a number of us probably made: once it's your day job, you might find that coding just for the sake of coding isn't quite as attractive anymore.

That said, I've considered myself lucky all my life that people have been willing to pay me for what I probably would've been doing anyway. I can't fault someone else for jumping on that train.

I stand corrected. Excellent points.

Well - you're never to old to learn new tricks ^^ And programming is still a useful and sometimes rewarding trick.

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