Approching 30...What should I do?

You can become a programmer from a non-programming computer profession. I was a sysadmin for a decade. Now I code all day and get paid for it. I'm in London too if you want to come talk at the London HN meetup next Thursday.

I suggest your issue may be you don't have the patience for a lot of non-practical beginner type programming tutorials. Reading a book about Sally and John sends you to sleep. It sends me to sleep too.

Here's what to do:

Make something really small that's useful to you.

> Myself, I am a telcoms/Network Engineer with knowledge of VoIP systems and Cisco.

Great!

* You need to SSH into boxes and run IOS commands right?

* Do people hand you spreadsheets with stuff to do?

* Maybe check if there's port capacity on a switch or something similar?

I'd make the smallest possible app to do that.

* First have it log into a box, run a command, and print the output

* Next perform some filtering, so rather than printing the output, it will check for something and tell you directly which ports have capacity.

* Next make it loop through multiple boxes in a text file

* Next make it read an Excel file with the switch names.

Python can do this (Paramiko does SSH, the xlrd & xlwt modules read and write Excel), and is also currently the teaching language of choice. It's more interesting than Java and more straightforward than PHP.

After that, I bet you've got some horrible annoying EnterpriseThing that outputs some ugly XML, right? The lxml module has a cool feature called xpath so you can extract the thing at '/report/stats/item[1]/' and do reporting on it. You can make save it as JSON and use OpenFlashChart to make a cool flash chart of the results.

Suddenly you're the guy that got info about 60 switches this morning. And made cool capacity charts. People will love you for these simple ideas, and it will make it easier to work on your more complex ideas.

Thanks for your great effort here, its true, port capacity is an issue and one that needs solving, so I can give what you've suggested, a try. Totally agree with you about Sally and John, does my head in. If I have to write one more "hello world" in a new language I am trying out..lol

I do love coding, I can get immersed in my code to the point where, 10-15 hour stints head down, not an issue, especially helps being an insomniac!

I have done some Python already and agree, its ' the teaching language of choice'. again, I will try the OpenFlashChart route and see how I get on.

One more issue I would love to address is CSS...Am lost with this one, is it required? or should I simply ignore this for now altogether.

Thank you for your advise.

No prob. CSS I'd honestly leave to someone else right now. Sites like OSWD can be helpful for getting pre-cut free stylesheets that don't look bad - focus your own efforts on the Python code that collects and sends the data.

PS: Am not in London but can be at the next event as am currently touring N.Africa. Can you let me know when the next one is happening after this Thursday? and where abouts in London as I dont come there often.

THANK YOU

Sure - http://groups.google.com/group/hn-london

thanks, see you soon.

I'll be the buzz kill here. It sounds like you are struggling with coding. You seem to have a desire to learn more, but not the "motivation" to do the study required.

Do you enjoy coding? If so, why no motivation? If not, why do you want to do it? Find something you enjoy and/or something that matches your natural ability. If coding has not clicked for you yet then it might never click.

Sorry to self-relpy, but I re-read your post and found your answer: "how do I program so I don't have pay others." I think that's a terrible reason to get into coding, and counterproductive.

I don't make my own clothes to save money, or build my own car to save money, or even change my own oil to save money. I seriously doubt you can save money by doing your own coding if you have no aptitude for it.

You can start heaps of successful startups and program all the code without knowing polymorphism. You don't need OO programming. You don't need MVC. Check out Rasmus Lerdorf's blog, the creator of PHP. He doesn't use MVC, objects or any of that stuff :)

But it sounds like you don't enjoy programming, which is a problem. Outsourcing is NOT the way to go, a major pain. You'll get more leverage out of getting a good technical cofounder. But then again, outsourcing might work if you're great at project management (but very few non-technical people truly are).

> I seem to have a great dificulty understanding MVC and therefore OO programming with PHP seems out of my league

Are you sure you are not mixing up the order of learning things here?

I think he's mixing it up because, like he said, he doesn't like reading programming books. He probably didn't read everything very thorough and skipped a few chapters. I used to do this too. I ended up not being able to solve simple problems which could've been solved easily if i had read some of the chapters more carefully.

and pps: nobody wants idea persons. Being an idea person is just another way of saying you have no skills. Having ideas is not a skill, and thinking your ideas are great isn't a skill either :) ok that was too harsh but you know what I mean?

Thanks for the advise, although I disagree with you when you say 'Having ideas is not a skill'. Having idea's is a massive skill and I found this out when working on two great startup. Coders who just code, simply could not think out of the scope of their languages and coding skills, hence they create a great product, but could not think of a single way to monetize it/improve the design aspects of it. I sat back and watched an entire team of very talented coders and PM's battle it out in the board room and yest, no result.

I don't think am brilliant, in fact ATM, the exact opposite, am hitting a very depressive time and don't think much of myself at all, but I do remember that day very clearly and when the arguing stopped I simply said, How about we do this and see how we got on, not one person including the founders, had though of it and not one of them disagreed. Anyone out there who has idea's should consider this a massive asset and I encourage it greatly in all types of work places. Too many thinks are done, because "we've always dont it this way".

Not all idea's are great either and one should know this when throwing idea's to a group of people, accepted criticism is a massive part of being an 'idea person'

Again, thanks for the advise above.

Are you having fun? Are you enjoying life? Are you increasingly feeling safe/more comfortable? For me, these questions remind me to enjoy the journey, periodically make a course correction, and make sure I am stashing something for the future while I have the resources.

What is the value of 30? Or 40? Beyond symbolism, don't the first group of questions stay the same?

Am always enjoying life, but I want to be more successful and run my own startup. I make a good living, have all the necessities in life, which being a basic person, is a roof, a set of clothes and some bread and water (some chicken thrown in ofcourse..lol). I live a basic life and have excess amounts of cash to invest into the AIM etc.

Here's what I missed out...am not having fun. A 9-5, I can not stand but lucky for me, I don't do have to do this. I go in when I want and finish when I want, my employers know I get the job done and just leave me to it. However, working for an organisation which its not allowed to make a profit is dragging me down.

I had the motivation to create great products managing teams, highly successful business models and double/triple profits for my employers. This may have left me feeling sh*t if my employers cashed in and I didnt, but most times, I was rewarded heavily. I have dont this for employers, now I want to do this for me.

Currently, I just keep a non-profit organisation plodding along, and so long as we break even at the end of the year, everyone keeps their job and we plod along!

This was important to me 2 years ago. My marriage had ended and I needed a stable thing, with the huge mortgage burdon she had left me with. I still have this morgage burdon, one I could seriously do without considering I dont care to live in a house or a caravan but with the market at an all time low, am stuck in a position where I will loss over 40K if I sell now. All my cash and not the banks so am not in negative-equite with them. You'll think am crazy here, but I dont care about cash, and have considers loosing 50K to get out. To me, its only money and hapiness is definately more important, however, when I evaluated my life once I sell, I simply end up renting and paying the same as the mortgage, so there's no point. How can I have fun in what I currently do is the question am asking myself now?

Thanks for helping me reach this far.

Don't worry about MVC just yet. Just start coding, get domething up and running ASAP. At some point you will start writing some code and think, "there must be a better way to do this". At that moment, research a few design patterns and other solutions.

It is more difficult to learn the solution to a problem if you have not encountered the problem yet.

If you hit it hard, don't give up and are relentlessly resourceful, anything is possible.

However, esp if you live in London, the real question is whether you're willing to endure several years of pain in case you're not immediately successful and profitable.

For motivation, have you tried the approach of starting with a modest problem and a book on a language and learned the (beginning of the) language as well as basic programming through solving the problem?

ps: why is hitting 30 a problem? You seem to be doing just fine?

30 is hitting hard on me and I agree with the other posters here and yourself, am stressing but its just a number!

I have a need, its simple, I need to be financially independent. This doesn't mean I need multi-million pounds and be able to afford lambo's. I am a basic person, so for me, to have enough income to live, a house paid off and little excess money to go out every month although this latter isn't a requirement, considering I have gone out every weekend for 2 years and have spent no more than a couple hundred pound. I don't drink and my friends don't let me ever pay for theirs.