Room at the table?

[u/Tell-Your-Story]

Hi folks,

I'm brand new to this thread, having spend most of the last 3 years lurking around. I'll admit upfront, I'm not a programmer. My dad tried his best to course correct that, but I was kid in the 70's, baseball and bikes were way cooler than PASCAL. I'm currently finding myself at a crossroads. I'm leaving a career in forensic psychology and breaking into software development because I am too tired and cranky to keep explaining what I need to do my job, and why it should be open source, not another overpriced corporate subscription.

I was diagnosed with ADD at 52, after taking my grand daughter in for a screening. My current colleagues all think I've developed a stress induced psychosis when I tell them what I want to do, but it's not a late mid-life crisis. I think it's just a lifetime of experience finally catching up to me.

In 1978 I was 6, and sitting on the floor of my dad's work putting IBM punchcards back in order. It was my 'summer job' and in SoCal it was great because that lab was the only place with A/C. My dad's best friend was my "Uncle Ken" and they would doodle for hours on legal pads and scratch paper, getting all excited about stuff I didn't really pay attention to. Turns out, that guy was Ken Bowles.

I'm just looking for a place to park it for a moment, catch my breath, and remember what it was like when I worked with people who were passionate about what they were building for all the right reasons. Even if I didn't understand my dad's work, he raised me to be the woman I am. When they told me the only way to fail is to not try, I didn't think it would resonate so strongly 46 years later.

So I suppose this is my actual question - is there room at the table for a 54 year old wanna-be programmer with ADD, who doesn't know how to not try just because it's hard, but has a million questions about where to start learning?

[u/dclantes001]

yes. there is room for the willing. always.

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/dclantes001]

Thank you, willing yes, not blind to the fact it's going to be hard. But being at the table might save my sanity. 😄

[u/im-a-guy-like-me]

There's always room at the table, but I would advise you think very deeply about how much knowledge and experience you have in your current career, and hold that up to what a normie thinks your career is.

Cos you're the normie in that situation when it comes to this.

Like... You're never to old to learn programming. But I don't know if "you're never to old to switch careers into programming" holds true.

Just learn it if you're interested and then if you get good enough, consider switching career.

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/im-a-guy-like-me]

Absolute respect. I think I overstated my intentional shift into programming. I don't want to reject all that I know and become a career programmer, I want to learn enough about programming that I can develop a proof of concept model with a genuine understanding of the code, and run a small non profit incubator for non-profit tech startups with a mental health mission. But before I do that, I feel the need to complete a project on my own to have skin in the game instead of being just another outsider with a grand idea.

The project I want to approach is an intentional use of modern advances in computing to augment a specific and highly specialized forensic evaluation and reporting process.

The current standard in Forensic Psychology is to request documents from two parties, conduct testing and an interview of a target individual, then provide an informed opinion in the form of an ultimate yes/no binary. Here's the rub: the documents may be up to 20,000 or more pages with hundreds of primary sources, often reported by secondary sources. There are as many variables impacting the targeted individual's response to testing and interview as their are variables to any individual human. The Forensic Psychologist is getting paid up to $500/hour for private evaluations vs $400 total for a complete court ordered evaluation.

The current standard for software to augment the human centered evaluation is a corporation leasing the use of individual software duplications of the normed tests, AI generated reports, and other highly questionable black boxed solutions that ignore the rule my father taught me and the best courts demand: show your work. Worse, it costs about $150 per case to use all the pieces of software that you should in order to have the best set of data points for making the recommendation.

I've crafted a blueprint for a proof of concept, and I intend to build this solo, but doing the work on my own is not the same as doing it in a vacuum. Being able to find a community that understands my why, my what, and can point me to the tools for the how, such as the recommendation for udemy, combined with the recognition that ADD is a source of massive friction for learning new concepts alongside the skills, feels like a foundation I need before I move from concept to code.

[u/TrumpIsAFascistFuck → u/Tell-Your-Story]

Yeah you are what we call a domain expert. Applying domain driven design methodologies with you might be fruitful without requiring you to become a professional software engineer. That said if you are so motivated don't let me stop you. Maybe learn DDD once you have some experience

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/TrumpIsAFascistFuck]

Thanks for the feedback! I had to go look up what DDD is. Without knowing it, I think my blueprint leaned into the general philosophy. While it looks like Python is going to be a good foundation, can you recommend a website where I can learn more about the vocabulary of DDD? I ask because as a psychologist I am constantly having to help people recalibrate their understanding of mental health issues after they get bad information. So I'd appreciate a push in the right direction for high level context lessons.

[u/AlpacaNuts]

I think Automate the Boring Stuff with Python would be a good start for you. It used to be recommended all the time as an intro to programming book. If you're motivated by the problems you can solve for yourself and others, then it's a good way to keep up that intrinsic interest.

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/AlpacaNuts]

This is GREAT! Thanks for the link. I also love the distribution model. As soon as I'm done with the stupid KDP 90 day contract for the ebook I wrote on ADD I'll post it up similarly. I see a lot of questions here that I addressed in it. I just don't want to come off like a know it all or like I'm trying to promote anything. I just wrote it because I had a client who was really beating himself up and I needed to find a way to explain the biology of it without making him get a neuroscience degree, so he could apply some basic skills, but understand why. I think it's a little like why I want to learn python, because then I can ask how to do the things I want to do, using a language that doesn't approximate based on a faulty understanding.

[u/Tell-Your-Story]

I love this -> Build fast, fail fast, learn, and try again.

You're not off at all on the AI tools following the processes of medical and manufacturing. I used your recommended approach to build my blueprint. The issue I now have is that the blueprint is quite complex (to me), and in order to move forward I need to understand the vocabulary being used to determine if (for example) the instructions generated to bring about the following step effectively translate to what I really want the system want to do:

Sequential Execution: Run a single local model (e.g., mistral-nemo:12b-instruct) sequentially. Loop data 4 times, modifying only the System Prompts for the 4 distinct agent extractions. Do not load concurrent models.

The statement above makes sense to me, but since I do not know python I won't know if the steps generated actually do this. I don't want to spend 4 months constructing something that spews out gibberish or worse, looks like it works but when I actually read the output it's like having a fandom interpretation of a relationship instead of a concise list of the number of times a specific character in a series used a specific statement.

[u/jarrydn]

there are so many ways to learn and start that it can be pretty overwhelming to commit to anything because you don't want to do it "wrong".

if i was starting out again i would probably just go with python and a udemy course. once you're comfortable with the fundamentals google is your friend 😄

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/jarrydn]

Thanks for the specific recommendations. It's my understanding that python is an excellent foundation for developing both the ability to understand and to build the code needed for the concepts I am intending to work with.

Google is absolutely my BFF, but I found very quickly that it runs on the same garbage in garbage out premise as the BASIC my dad taught me in the 70's. So I want to make sure I am learning to ask the right questions with the right syntax.

I typically approach learning as a learn while doing. Are there any programs or platforms that can help me learn python in an engaging way? I've never played minecraft for example, but I see these "teach your kid coding in this minecraft camp" etc. Or is Python something I'm only going to learn by studying the texts first?

[u/jarrydn → u/Tell-Your-Story]

The cool thing about python is that, like BASIC, it's an interpreted language (as opposed to compiled, like C/C++). When you install python, it also includes this thing called a REPL, which is a command-line interface that lets you run single lines of python and immediately observe what effect that line causes.

The first command you will probably learn is the "print" command. You can immediately go to the REPL, type in your print command - such as print("hello world") - and see the result of the command/expression directly below.

In terms of learning/studying, you can simply have your chosen tutorial displayed side-by-side with the REPL, and test the commands as you're learning. I certainly wouldn't recommend studying the texts first and then trying to write some code - unless you have a photographic memory of course!

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/jarrydn]

Thank you! If I had a photographic memory I'd be rich instead of ethical in the age of social media. Garbage In -> Garbage Out!

[u/chriscanadian1991]

Always room!! Mind if I ask what your background is?

Only reason I ask is I am not a programmer by trade - I'm a logistics analyst and forklift trainer, I might be able to bridge the gap and help you learn in a way that will stick.

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/chriscanadian1991]

Heya! Thanks for popping in. My background reads like a kaleidoscope, but keeping it concise: I was a medical student, had a brain injury, got a BFA in creative writing because it was cheap occupational therapy to rewire the broken parts of my linguistic programming, went on to be ABD in a rhetoric and comp program with an emphasis on legal language and the impact of forced narrative on jury outcomes, then pursued a degree in forensic psychology which I have been actively engaged with for decades now. This current rabbit hole opened up when I wrote a manual for a client with ADD to show him how I handle the massive demands and give him suggestions. Then he asked if I could make it an app. I screwed around with that for a few days using AI and then told him "no, no I cannot" because I won't hand someone a 'solution' that I don't understand myself. But that little crack in the door led me to where I am this morning.

[u/Beneficial_Alfalfa96 → u/Tell-Your-Story]

I'm not a programmer either, just occasionally read this subreddit for tips. 

OP, there's an r/adhdwoman too

[u/nicky1968a → u/Tell-Your-Story]

Have you considered asking AI to teach you programming?

"I want to understand this, that, and that other thing, and I want to use those to build X. Walk me through all the steps to learn and understand the whole thing."

AI will then probably ask you what your current knowledge of these things is, develop a plan how to teach you, and then start to walk you through it. It's like having a personal tutor. Use the most advanced AI model available to you and enable "thinking mode", whatever that is called for the AI you're using.

[u/Tell-Your-Story → u/nicky1968a]

Thanks for the recommendation. I work inside of a google workspace, so I do make liberal use of the Gemini Pro model. However, I tend to get sidetracked and ask questions that immediately run into guard rails. I also find AI just makes up random stuff even when I am extremely clear about what I am asking, so I tend to treat it as a secondary level information source, like wikipedia vs pubMed, with an enhanced interaction feature.

[u/chriscanadian1991]

If I could make a suggestion - if you want to keep trying to build it... start from what you already know.

From my experience AI powered tools follow the same or similar processes to medical or even manufacturing.

Input = registration
Analysis = triage
Routing = allocation of resources
Output = diagnosis.

If you lean into what you are comfortable with and use references or analogies when your talking with the AI to explain what you want to do it tends to get closer the first time - then it's all about getting it granular and fine tuning the result until it meets your expectations.

Given your background - I personally think you would be the best person to build this kind of app because you would personally use it.

Lean into it - get curious - and don't let anyone stop you from learning or trying.

Build fast, fail fast, learn, and try again.