Is it too late to start learning programming at the age of 24?

I am 24 years old. I just started learning programming and want to become a programmer. Is it too late?

This is a problem that I have encountered many times before. For me, the answer is simple: what do you really like to do?

There are many types of programming, such as web engineers or software engineers. There are many programming languages and development environments that have been evolving. So the question of age is not a problem at all, because programming requires the use of constantly evolving tools. What you have learned now may be outdated five or ten years later. The key to any profession is to know what you want and how to get it? Since I started programming, 40 years have passed: My technical jobs have also evolved from programmers to software engineers, from software engineers to system administrators, from system administrators to managers. Any company will have two career paths of technology and management. Generally, it may take about five years to choose from: different companies, different schools, and I have walked through both of them.

Now, I am an independent consultant and have the freedom to choose what I want to do. I was lucky to find my favorite job to earn a living and enjoy it. It all started with the first programming class at the age of 22, the first real programming job found at the age of 24. It will never be too late to do what you like. If you have other questions, ask: I am happy to help new programmers achieve their goals.

Erin Parker's answer

It will never be too late. Many things will happen in a year, which may surprise you.

My major is economics. When I was 23 years old, I accidentally decided to attend a railsbridge meeting where you would learn how to develop a basic Ruby on Rails application within one day. I developed a common application and enjoyed it very much. On that day, the seeds were planted.

A few months later, I had idea for a site that I had been trying to create. Although idea is not very clear, on this site, I imagine it can encourage ms to become the backbone of society. I think it may be a career planning site or a health field. I'm sure I want to name it with Spitfire. I strongly feel that such a product is necessary, and I feel that I have a good perspective and vision to create it.

Although I had not made up my mind to learn programming at that time, I still drew the following sketch:

I mailed the sketch to my friends for their opinions.

At that time, I was keen on weightlifting and made some achievements. At the same time, I am frustrated that it is difficult to find high-quality and trustworthy materials related to women's weightlifting, so to solve these problems, I think I may have to do something.

In the end, I decided to put it into practice. My friends always ask me how to exercise, how to lift weights, and how to eat healthily. I decided to learn Ruby on Rails and published these questions and answers.

I figured out that if I learned programming, even if I failed, I would at least fail to build a website that would Popularize what I learned to millions of people. It is worth the effort.

However, at the same time, I decided to only succeed, not to fail. I will not stop unless I have constructed the image of Spitfire in my brain. I know that if I stick to the difficulties, the final results will not disappoint me.

I started to learn Ruby on Rails with various free resources, such as learn Ruby the hard way, try Ruby, codecademy, Michael Hartl, why's poignant guide to Ruby, the rails guides and my favorite railscasts.

I am very persistent. If I don't understand something when I first met it, I'm not really. I will review it over and over again until I understand it. I will look for different interpretations of this concept. I will ask my friends. In a coffee shop, if I am programming and the person sitting on the opposite side can see from the sticker on his laptop that he is a programmer, I will ask him if he can help me (I have made many friends in this way, and several of them are very, very good friends now ).

I will attend many developer exchanges, especially women who code. I like their "one meeting, one tutorial" and all Ruby group exchanges, because they are easy to help.

I have been sticking to it for a few months, and the idea in my brain jumps out a little bit. You can still view many of my earlier projects:

Http://spitfiredarkstar.herokuap...
Http://spitfiredauntless.herokua...
Http://spitfirehellcat.herokuapp...
Https://spitfireocelot.herokuapp...

The most energy I have invested is this:
Http://spitfireathlete.herokuapp...

This site has rich functions. It has a beautiful interface and a good user experience. It is a set of good features of Ruby on Rails that I have learned. Unfortunately, no one uses it.

Joy and loss are also filled with me. I feel like I have good design skills, but I am developing something that nobody wants to use.

When I asked my friends why they didn't use it, I learned that what they really wanted was "just tell me how to do it ". And they want something that looks good on their cell phones so that they can be trained by reference in the gym.

So I decided to change the direction, learned jquery mobile, and constructed this:

Http://spitfirewarrior.herokuapp...

What surprised me is that although the interface is rough and the logic is simple, people actually use it. And they want more things. They want it to be like an iOS app called gasp.

As a time node, I have been learning rails for about six months.

I realized that if I want to get closer, I have to learn about iOS development. I did successfully use jquery mobile, but soon realized that it is only suitable for some prototypes (very simple applications ).

I remember it was July. I decided. Do you know what it is? I am 24 years old, but I want to become an iOS developer. What if I am not a computer professional? I have more motivation and determination than most people. They may be smarter than me, but I just never give up. I have already gone so far. Why should I stop?

So I did the same thing. I learned all the IOS resources I could find. I have done all the exercises, challenged the questions, and completed the learning of each book at hand from start to end. O'reillys books are very expensive. I am very grateful to anyone who sent me a copy of o'reillys PDF.

I frequently participate in women who code IOS exchanges, from the big nerd ranch book on OBJ-C and iOS, from Ray wenderlich's tutorial, from Apple's official documentation, benefits.

I have developed many small applications (that is how you learn )! I also make a promise to myself, never think of any technology as difficult, because I think it's just like automatically adding a ceiling on your own learning. So I learned a lot of things that made IOS developers discouraged. Although I didn't use it now, I realized that it made me a stronger developer, although it took me a lot of time and night.

The following is a picture of my technical speech at the technical exchange meeting. The topic is how to develop a custom rails API and how to send the data to your iPhone application through afnetworking.

It was 2013 in May and was 24 years old. My own speech...Just nowI learned the knowledge in my speech. I feel like an "iOS scammers" and just retired from "Rails scammers.

Next, I learned tableviews and transplanted the Spitfire function to the iOS app, even though I started all the development from scratch. I started learning obj-C two weeks later.

A few months later. A little bit, I am doing better and better. It is true that IOS is a system with a high user interface. If you do not learn the design, your application will look ugly. It is basically impossible to free yourself from the front end. So I decided to learn design and Photoshop through the course above hack design.

Photoshop is much easier than learning programming, So I soon designed these nice simulation programs.

Later, around October 2013, I converted the simulation program into the "Spitfire athlete pre-Alpha" application. The following is a screenshot of the program running on my mobile phone.

After several months of use, many enthusiastic users began to ask for more features. I think it is time to turn my crazy passion into a startup company, and I hired a strong entrepreneurial partner, Nidhi Kulkarni, an outstanding mit computer graduate. Like me, she is also an athlete (she completed D1 rowing at MIT ).

With two technicians, two active women are in control of Spitfire. I think our efficiency has increased by 10 times. We started our cooperation in May. I was on a 24-Year-Old Tail and knew that I was pursuing something that looked forward to me.

We attended the code path IOS Mobile training camp, a training camp for professional IOS developers. We completed "Spitfire athlete pre-Alpha", on the demo Day (evaluated by the director of top software companies in Silicon Valley ), we won "Best iOS app" and "Best Overall app ". That's cool, because I'm the only non-computer student in the course.

In February January 2014, I was 25 years old. In April 2014, we released it to the App Store and placed it on the homepage of the best new application, ranking first in all health apps. Now we have tens of thousands of users and have received a lot of approval emails. It makes me deeply feel that the persistence is worthwhile.

You can download this application from the App Store: Spitfire Athlete

I decided to write down these replies tonight because I recently want to review my iOS development materials. I once thought, "How long does it take? No, time is too short .". Then I remembered how I first started.

I hope this reply will inspire you and those who read it to learn how to program, and turn what you like into real things, it is difficult to express the wonderful feeling of developing an application that tens of thousands of people like.

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Is it too late to start learning programming at the age of 24?