How old are you guys? When is it too late to be a developer ?

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19. Never too late. The younger the easier it is to learn new stuff though.

I started coding professionally after age 40.

When I was younger I was impatient and a pretty bad student. I didn't really take to it until I was older.

The limitation comes more from circumstances than age. If you have time to study and code, than you can do it. A background in math or engineering, would make your learning process easier and faster. But the most important is your interest and regular practice.

There's nothing preventing it, but older newcomers encounter ageism because they are competing for the same jobs as recent grads. That creates an awkward dynamic.

I've been doing this for 20+ years, and I've had mixed experience with latecomers. About 40% I couldn't stand because they seemed to want authority and deference due to their age (50s, usually). I don't know if that's generational or what.

Mid 20's. And I just switched from being a Linux sysadmin to a cybersecurity engineer role :)

Late 20's.

It's too late when life fucks you hard enough to lose motivation. Happens to everyone but they pretend it doesn't.

It's never too late to be a programmer or anything you want to become or achieve. If you have passion and dedication along with strong will power - you can achieve it.

See, I just learned about 82-year-old Masako Wakamiya. She started coding at the age of 60 and currently is the World's Oldest Programmer

There are many young programmers too - Muhammad Hamza Shahzad, Tanmay Bakshi, Samaira Mehta and many more who started their journey of coding before they turned 10. 😃

If you're still breathing, it's not too late

Never too late. I attended a summer programming class once at 16. I was the youngest there. Everyone else's ages were from 20 - 50.

@SortOfTested The only thing I hate more than noobs on the left side of the Dunning-Kruger curve are senior devs who are experienced in general, but don't know shit about the project and yet feel they should already come up with all sorts of "improvements". The latter ones are so much harder to shut down.

I was over 30 when I started uni (background: Had a shitty job and figured it's late to start, but if I don't start now it will be even later; Fear regret more than failure and all that) and got a job as a dev before I finished the third year. I had always been a nerd but I had never coded more than bash or batch scripts before.

I was definitely not the only one over 20 there. I saw a couple who looked like they were in their 40s or even 50s.

I felt bad "being behind" when I started, but ironically with things moving and changing so fast, it also means that you can teach yourself things today that a 15 year senior doesn't know.

I am 38. I am not a developer, but going on this direction.

I always loved to create stuff, I did high school and uni on programming, but I ended up as a localization engineer. Started as an engineer and went to localization project manager (the only real challenge here was to answer fast everyone and find fast a translator). So it was not pleasure at all and I would love to have a better job. Something more technical and that could lead me to a CTO path or something on this way. So I started developing again for the last 4 years at all my spare time.

As my company grew and we needed someone at automation, I was moved on that direction as an Automation Engineer (who works as a PM every now and them).

I do my own Dev with personal stuff and while I don't plan to leave the company, I want to be prepared to get a Dev job if necessary some day.

It's never too late. Being younger is a problem - you're too eager to fly before you even know how to walk. You feel like you've gotta do it by tomirrow or else you're out. Needless to say this effect does not help to learn things. Now add on top the general curiosity, uncertainty and wanting to try everything out while having the same 24hours in a day and boi it sucks...

Being older introduces nore patience and structure to the learning process. Ofc there's also the fear of falling behind, because it feels like you're going slower.. However, it's a tad more difficult to remember new things at older age, to associate newly learnt things to the ones you found a month ago. You'll perfectly remember what you've learnt today ir a day before, but the further ago - the more foggy the memory gets. Because of age-related changes in cns affecting formation of new neural links and making them hold.

However, it's never too late. I'm still teaching my dad [>50] about linux, networking and itsec and he seems to learn it quite well. Also he learned some English a while ago, which came as a surprise to me. I respect the man for his determination.

Go for it.

It won't be easy. But it's possible ;)