Am I Too Old to Learn Coding?

A question I often get from people is, “Tim, am I too old to become a programmer?” Let’s answer that, in this video.

Today’s question as you saw earlier was am “I too old to start out in a career as programming?” The short answer to this is no, you’re not too old. Just to give you an idea, generally I’ve had students ranging from eight years old in my programming courses, up to their 80’s. I think the oldest was a chap, I think his name was Alfred who was in late 80’s, 88 or something along those lines. He was wanting to start out as a programmer.

So, it’s never too late to get into it, but if you’re looking to get into programming as a career, obviously, there would be effectively, a cut-off and you couldn’t sort of just assume that say you’re age 80 to get your first job in programming. You might find that a bit difficult. Although in general, anything from 20’s obviously, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s or around those age groups, I don’t think there’ll be any problem finding a job if you can persevere. As long as you’re committed and you’re prepared to work hard.

Now, keep in mind that it can be seen as an advantage being older. Obviously, there’s disadvantages as well. But one advantage would be, you’re more mature. So, at the age of 30, in your 30’s, your 40’s or 50’s, you’ve probably got your life in order a little bit more. Perhaps you’ve figured out where you wanna be and if you’re coming into a career late, probably the prospective employee is gonna see that you’ve made this decision and you’re more likely to stick to it. Comparing that to someone who’s in their late teens or early 20’s, you know, they might be starting out with programming but they might decide ultimately, programming is not for them. They also might wanna switch to another career.

So, you’ve done that, you’ve switched in your scenario. If you’re looking to get into programming at a later age. You’re switching to programming, so in other words, you’re figuring out where you wanna be. So, that can be seen as an advantage. And it’s not to say, you won’t have hurdles to overcome. Obviously, if you’re pitted against someone in their 20’s and you’re in your 50’s, you’ll have to show and give reasons to a prospective employer as to why they should choose you. But you can do that. Number one thing would be to obviously, learn programming. Learn the skills that you actually need to become a programmer and just show the prospective employer that you know, you’re willing to work hard and persevere at it.

So, bottom line here the short answer is it’s absolutely never too late to start out to learn programming. I hope that helped. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.