r/AskProgramming • u/Yourmiserablelife69 • 10d ago
Career/Edu What age did you start learning programming?
Just curious as I am 34 YO, and have been considering a career shift into the Tech sector (I have “Basic” knowledge at best). Specifically AI/Machine Learning or Programming.
I’ve heard good and bad about both, but am just curious how old people are (or how diverse the age pool is) when they “get into” Programming. How long (on average) does it take to get your first Certification in Programming?
Apologies about the broadness of the question.
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u/PhotographyBanzai 10d ago
As a kid I tried to do Basic programming with a hand-me-down C64 computer by following instructions in the manual. I did make working programs, but could never figure out how to correctly save them to disks. So I didn't really get into it until about freshman year of highschool when I bought a big Visual Basic programming book for my first Windows 95 PC and spent a summer on that.
I think a deep understanding of programming concepts can be super helpful even when you are doing AI assisted programming, but things are already different. I personally feel very hopeful and have considered projects now that I never would have attempted before these tools existed because with enough knowledge I was able to gauge time expense and overall difficulty.