Damn... my school is only teaching us how to use adobe flash builder.

Rails does pay well: Ruby on Rails, San Francisco on Indeed.com = $136,000
Related: Sinatra 144K, Ruby 134K.

But even better is cloud or distributed storage: OpenStack 156K, Heroku 142K; Hadoop 146K.

When I first saw this thread I was wondering if I got drunk, made a gimmick account, posted a thread about learning programming in my 40s, and then forgot I did it, lol. So, thanks for starting the thread OP.

I'm in a somewhat similar situation. Early 40s, looking to change careers. I have a fairly solid publishing (print and web) background and have been part of several corporate software and web design projects as the guy sitting across the table from the programmers helping to explain the project requirements and then reviewing/testing/bug reporting the various builds. I have a working knowledge of XML, HTML, and CSS and understand site design and usability.

I've been teaching myself python, enjoying it, and making good progress. I have a book about Ruby sitting on my desk waiting for me to finish the python one I'm working through. I feel like I've learned a lot, but it is clear to me that I would learn much more quickly with some real training.

I have been looking into doing one of these bootcamps. They look intense, but I think I could do well in one.

Biggest drawback from my perspective is my age. Just worried that getting my first 2-3 years of experience will be tough as companies would rather not hire a 40something ex-manager for an entry level programming job (and I don't really blame them).

Still, I'm looking for something to do for the next 20 years or so, so if it takes a few to get established, that is not terrible. If I were 10 years younger, I would probably be applying right now instead of posting here.

It may be a good idea to post this question on a place like quora or some kind of stackexchange programmers site, as due to the sample size there will likely be more people who were in your position and can give you either their success or failure stories.

Not my part of the project but the UI on an embedded system I work on utilizes adobe flash player implementing SA scripts. Pretty nice graphics.

I don't think it's a bad idea to start in your 40s. I would rather hire a 40s something who is making a career change than a random person fresh out of college.

To make a career change at 40+ seems like you would have a real desire to do the new thing you're trying to learn. You're probably a million times more motivated than a younger person with close to zero life experience.

Also having a programmer who is good at explaining things in a non-technical way to other non-technical people is a huge advantage IMO.

If you can put together a couple of example projects for a portfolio, few will question your age.

For those of you who have applied to App Academy, what resources do they send you to help you prepare for the coding challenge(s)?

https://github.com/appacademy/prep-work

Thank you kindly

After 2.5 weeks I'd say the amount of prep I did and recommend may be overkill as far as preparing to be able to complete the course. That said, I think doing that much prep is a good idea for a few reasons.

I think it definitely helps your chances of getting in. Virtually everyone here has a tech degree or comes from a prestigious school. If you lack those things you better be able show passion and ability towards programming. Taking advantage of free resources I think goes a long way.

It will help you by making the first weeks less stressful. Class here runs from 9 to 6, but you're expected to put in the time to finish the day's projects. I'd say probably a third of the class is still working on the day's projects at 9pm and there's a decent percentage up until around midnight a few nights a week.

Probably most importantly, if you put in the time and effort to get through all the prep you should have a good idea if this is something you want to do. Dropping everything for three months is a pretty big step and I wouldn't want anyone to undertake it without knowing that this is something they want to be doing for every waking moment for months and then as a career

okay if you're totally new to programming this might be the case, otherwise you definitely dont have to be "dropping everything for three months".

i started playing WoW halfway through (leveled 1-90, raided SoO normal) and didn't miss any test questions. also never stayed passed 6 pm.

just be efficient with your time and don't dick around

Don't be such a nit. How is moving to another city and planning on being unemployed and not job hunting for months not putting everything on hold? Oh and the fact that nearly half the class lives on site, definitely not putting things on hold.

Sure you can have some social life, but unless you're already living in San Francisco and unemployed you're moving away from friends and family and quitting a job. For most people that's their life.

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if your emphasis is that your life at a/A will be different, sure I agree. seems moot tho?

if your emphasis is that a/A takes up all of your time, I disagree

^ I interpreted this as the latter. regardless the point is that while a/A is challenging, you don't have to pull all-nighters or something. the curriculum is very well made so you learn fast but won't drown you or anything.

Ah, a bit of a misunderstanding then.

My advice was geared to total newbies with no programming experience. For them it seems a/A represents a pretty big life change. I think it would be wise for those types to put in the time to find out if it's really a change they want to make.

And then being a stronger programmer coming in her the benefit of making your life easier as well.

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Do you feel things are getting easier/tougher the further you get into the program blackize?

Definitely getting tougher. I'm not having difficulty because I have some exposure to most of these concepts, languages, frameworks, and domain specific languages(rspec, capybara, etc) already.

There's a lot to take in and you're expected to do so quickly. It's tough for a lot of people.

If you're smart and work hard it's clear that you can get by, but the weaker people's projects are getting less and less finished at the end of the day as we keep piling new information on the old stuff.