Thank you for sharing your story, Justin -- Man... you about summed up my experience at bars, but I'm in tech-central (SF Bay Area) and when everyone here works in tech, most people just don't give two hoots.
It's amazing to hear about the doors that opened once you had stepped into this world! I've a very similar story (built sites in my teens and throughout college in HTML, JS, and PHP), but did go through a bootcamp and had taken CS courses in the past, but otherwise the massive learning increments afforded to me by the abundance of resources now available online is key! I've learned a lot by contributing and reading source code from open source projects as well and love reading about how other successful self-taught devs have acquired their skills -- two people that always seem to come to mind are TJ Holowaychuk (former prolific contributor to the Node and Golang communities) and Yehuda Katz (Rails core team, EmberJS, Ruby's Bundler, Node's Yarn, and Rust's Cargo).
Lastly, it's most incredible that you did it in your 30s with a family in tow! I hear, "that ship has sailed" from a lot of people, but now I've got a story (yours) that I can share. Those of us that are passionate about our craft can't ever see this amazing journey of learning and building ever ending. So, I typically ask people (often in their late 20s and 30s), "how many more years do you see yourself working?" The typical answer is the standard retirement age in the U.S. (some 30+ years). This usually makes them think for a moment. Whether it's enough to convince them to consider immersing oneself back into learning remains to be seen...
Framing it as how many more years will you work before retirement is a smart way to encourage people who think it’s too late. Thanks for reading and for the encouragement!
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Thank you for sharing your story, Justin -- Man... you about summed up my experience at bars, but I'm in tech-central (SF Bay Area) and when everyone here works in tech, most people just don't give two hoots.
It's amazing to hear about the doors that opened once you had stepped into this world! I've a very similar story (built sites in my teens and throughout college in HTML, JS, and PHP), but did go through a bootcamp and had taken CS courses in the past, but otherwise the massive learning increments afforded to me by the abundance of resources now available online is key! I've learned a lot by contributing and reading source code from open source projects as well and love reading about how other successful self-taught devs have acquired their skills -- two people that always seem to come to mind are TJ Holowaychuk (former prolific contributor to the Node and Golang communities) and Yehuda Katz (Rails core team, EmberJS, Ruby's Bundler, Node's Yarn, and Rust's Cargo).
Lastly, it's most incredible that you did it in your 30s with a family in tow! I hear, "that ship has sailed" from a lot of people, but now I've got a story (yours) that I can share. Those of us that are passionate about our craft can't ever see this amazing journey of learning and building ever ending. So, I typically ask people (often in their late 20s and 30s), "how many more years do you see yourself working?" The typical answer is the standard retirement age in the U.S. (some 30+ years). This usually makes them think for a moment. Whether it's enough to convince them to consider immersing oneself back into learning remains to be seen...
Framing it as how many more years will you work before retirement is a smart way to encourage people who think it’s too late. Thanks for reading and for the encouragement!