I often hear from friends, “No, I can’t learn programming. My mind just doesn’t work that way. And I’m too old to start learning new things.” But fortunately, the general trend nowadays is that more and more people are not afraid to change careers at a mature age, and many are choosing programming.
I studied at Vocational College in a two-year course, and most of the students were over thirty. A few people dropped out for various reasons. One reason was that the course was too difficult compared to the entrance criteria; they admitted people whose programming skills were below high school level.
Therefore, I would recommend anyone enrolling in such courses to take some preparatory online courses. For example, if you’ve been admitted to a “Programming in Python” course, it might be a good idea to check out some introductory Python videos on YouTube before starting.
Unfortunately, you can’t always expect the organizers or owners of the courses to have really good teachers. The instructors might be high-class programming specialists, but they might not be as great at teaching. In such cases, it becomes very important to find a learning method that works for you.
I started learning programming when I was around fifty years old. Web design was always a hobby of mine. My basic education was in engineering and the sciences, but still, when I started a serious programming course in Java, it was quite challenging at first. Gradually, I figured out the best way for me to grasp programming concepts. I believe that everyone learning something, including programming, should find their own “technology” of understanding. For example, I found it helpful to compare programming to electronics. I tried to abstractly understand the flow of a program by comparing it to how signals travel through electronic circuits. Of course, these two processes aren’t always directly comparable, but this approach helped me formulate questions—and even formulating a question was hard at the beginning of my studies. Perhaps others might find it easier to compare such processes to how liquids flow through pipes or channels. It’s important to find an approach that works for you to abstract the process.
Moreover, don’t feel embarrassed to ask questions on specialized forums. Usually, there are some polite conversationalists there who can help solve problems. Now, with a wide choice of AI services, you can have entire dialogues with clarifications. You can upload photos of program interfaces to AI services and ask for examples of such programs’ code or inquire how certain code snippets work.
Today, there are many opportunities to learn programming “easily” (although it won’t actually be easy). With the right conditions, I believe you can go from the first chapter of a programming book to a fairly confident beginner in one academic year.
Write code every day!
