I’m a 44- year old guy, currently working as a Research Engineer at a biotech research company. In the past I’ve worked as a movie technician, a cab driver, a crane operator, a brewer, hospital lab technician… I still haven’t decided what I will be when I grow up, and now I’ve built up this interest in programming…
The centering I mention in the topic is about the need for some mental centering: coming into programming with pretty much zero experience (I have dabbled in HTML and CSS years ago), it feels like a pretty formidable parallel universe to even know where to start venturing into? I started a MOOC open Python course at the Helsinki University, and now also am looking at the FCC- curriculum. I still feel completely overwhelmed that maybe there are a zillion places I should be following on social media, watching videos on Youtube etc… ? I have this bad habit of thinking I should (or even could) do everything at once. So I would like to hear about your experiences, what’s important at the beginning and what’s not?
I’m not thinking of this journey as “I need to change my job in a year”- kind of project, but I’m more trying to stay in the mindset of “this is interesting on it’s own, and if something comes out of it professionally that’s a plus”.
Don’t feel too bad - I didn’t start working on web dev until I was 47 and didn’t get my first job until 49.
But yeah, knowing where to start can be tough. My suggestion would be to not worry about it. It’s like if you have to cut down a forest - you can’t focus on every tree simultaneously. You need to focus on the tree you care cutting down now. Is it the right tree? Would there be a more efficient way to do it? At some point you need not to worry about this and just start chopping away.
Don’t worry about finding the perfect path, just start making progress. Anything you learn will be some kind of progress. As far as following things on social media, I wouldn’t worry about it at this point unless there is something that really interests you. As far as youtube videos, I’m not sure what you mean here… I used a lot of youtube videos as tutorials, but that was mostly when I had a specific topic that I couldn’t figure out. If there is a video that interests you, watch it. If you’re not interested or are busy with something else, make a mental note and move on.
Just learn and build things. There is no perfect path, especially since you don’t know where you’re going yet. Any path where you are learning something is at least good. It sounds like you like Python - I would say not to worry about where you will end up and just start learning Python. Learn Python and start building things. Have fun.
