Even though you’re 23 and a non traditional college student don’t let that bother you! I’m going back to get my associates at a Jr college and I’m 33 my friend! How do you think I feel, I have a ten year time leap on you! I know the truth though, working dead end jobs and dealing with so many personalities, people my age have what office jobs call soft skills. The ability to deal with people in a group or team atmosphere. Age discrimination just doesn’t seem to happen in tech because of the vast amount of jobs and no you won’t be fighting for a job if you have a degree and a proof that you can code like a great GitHub repo. Believe in yourself, code every day and don’t forget I start my degree August of this year! I’m 33! Drop me a PM I would like to keep in contact, since we are in the same boat 
exchanging stories will be awesome.
You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You want to learn for yourself rather than to show off to anyone that “Look at me, now I can do it!”. For me that would be wrong motivation to begin with.
Best advice I can give you: don’t compare yourself to others. Keep track of everything you do, and compare yourself to the person you were a month ago.
Comparing yourself to others is a really short path to frustration, because most likely you’re going to focus on people that’s on a better situation than you.
As for personal doubts, I’m 30 and I face them pretty often, then I resort to my first advice.
Older is not necessarily bad. I didn’t complete my second college stint, but I was a more successful student in my second stint because I was more mature as a person. I was able to prioritize and plan better, utilizing the school resources better. It’s a bit like new game +, the second time around you are more familiar with what you need to do and how to achieve them.
You will start to eliminate doubts as you start to do better than the past self. Just focus on achieving victories and being better than you were yesterday. The doubt won’t be gone, but knowing you’re better than you were before will boost your confidences.
Everytime I wake up, I look at the mirror and tell myself,“You got everything under control.”
It helps, always does
I know it’s been some months since you posted this, but I felt the need to weigh in on it a bit.
I know how you feel, and I also sometimes struggle with other peoples dissenting opinions of my choices, but as long as you know what you’re doing is the right thing (and in this case I firmly believe it is) then you should keep on grinding away at it.
“Be better than who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today”
-Dr. Jordan Peterson
I am a thirteen year old homeschooler and I’m almost done with hight school and I’m here on freecodecamp as well.
Don’t worry about your grades. just try your best.
sitting in front of a computer 10 hours a day is something even I can’t do even though I love coding. get a balance ball and stand on it while you prop your computer up on a high table so you can work on balance and not be stuck in a chair. That’s what my parents had me do.
Just explain that many graduates from any field don’t get jobs in their field and end up flipping burgers or something like that. There are simply too many graduates with BA/BSc degrees in almost anything for them all to get a job in that area of study. So, you could argue that almost ALL industries are saturated, especially as many jobs have gone abroad over recent years. Academic inflation is also a reality.
Indeed, and going to college is definitely NOT saving money, but you’ll have a whole heap of debt before you even start looking for a job. Why not try to get into a company at a lower level, get paid while you learn, and do the degree, maybe a 1-year master degree as a mature student with industry experience? That may be easier said than done, though.
Going to college these days does not guarantee a good job anyway, for the reason mentioned earlier.
Linus ‘Linux’ Torvalds had a walking desk; a desk with a treadmill under it.
Yes, they are important, but what is a degree? It is a collection of knowledge verified by a single source. That’s all it is. Of course, lecturers provide more information, which is probably based on things they read.
If you read exactly the same books list and did exactly the same projects/experiments outside of a collage/university setting, you would have the same level of knowledge and application of it but no verification.
Collages and universities give you information so that employers don’t have to.
I was dealing with all kinds of internal doubts and fears as well, but eventually found out that doing nothing and not improving was even scarier for me, than chasing after goal. It is the actual fear of being stuck that made me try to improve, weird when you think about it
Oh, smart!
That is cool.