I'm sorry, but I can't help but be incredibly cynical and jaded about this, and from reading the comments, nobody seems to have the same sentiment. If this was titled "How I learned to play the piano in my 30s", I don't think anybody would bat an eye: learning an instrument is not like joining some secret cult, and anybody can develop basic music literacy over a year or two. I also do not doubt this man's proficiency, but 30 is not old outside of tech circles. This youth fetishization in tandem with the "everybody's dog should learn to code" meme I think is very short-sighted.

Tech is wildly lucrative, is in current demand, and is not physical labor. That reduces the barrier to entry to anybody who has a laptop and an Internet connection. Honestly how many people would be so eager to learn to code if you dropped down the average tech salary to 45,000 (matching other professions)? I think far less: people seem to learn to want to code to ride the high-pay wave, not for the actual love of code.

Again, let's compare to music. Anybody can go to a guitar store and buy a 200$ keyboard. But if I took a 14-week class and afterwards had the aught to call myself a "Music Ninja Rockstar" or some other such nonsense, and start applying to orchestras and bands, I would be called crazy.

Software has eaten the world, and it's here to stay. Increasing the general software literacy is no more different than saying we should teach everybody how to read (and a good thing). However, throwing each person in a bootcamp telling them "coding is wonderful! you can master it in 5 seconds and make 200k a year!" is no different than holding a similar bootcamp for any other vocation and then wondering why the average plumber can't actually fix your house, but can only use a plunger. I sincerely hope this trend stops. This mindset is broken, and the paradigm is highly unsustainable. Where will we be in 20 years?

I'm 36 and learning how to be a real programmer. Was a Linux Admin, and an architect for my career. Did presales, and became an expert at a lot of different roles within the field.

Never was truly a developer, and decided I wanted to accept a job as one. I've programmed in the past, how hard can it be?

Wow, it's been enlightening. Really hard. I thought it would be straight forward since I've used scripted quite a bit in perl in my past, but being a developer is much more than writing a few scripts to automate a task.

I'm a few months in now, and I am still slower than all my colleagues by quite a bit, and the main language I'm working in has changed already, moved from Python to Go.

Even right now, I'm stuck on an issue around pointers and data structures that feels like it should be easy, and I'm just not getting it.

All you can do is keep confidence up, and keep at it. Immersing in it, and knowing that irrational levels of effort will lead to results.

I thought it would be easier though :)

> Immersion means 100% focus. If possible, no friends, no drinking, no TV, just reading and writing code. If you take five minutes off to read the news, be aware you are breaking the mental state of immersion. Stay focused, be patient, your mind will adapt. Eliminate all distractions, of which you may find doubt to be the loudest. Immersion is the difference between success and failure.

Certainly, I think Deep Work require full concentration. So when in the mode of learning, I find keeping focus instead of going to a website to read news, or checking e-mail/messages to be incredibly important in maximizing the incremental process of grasping concepts.

That being said, whereas the author seems to prefer taking a few months to go deep into it, I prefer to immerse myself over a long period of time by learning and practicing a few hours per day (just like an instrument), letting my mind stew in the knowledge during diffuse thinking periods, and then come back to it the next day.