In the last ten years I have written useful programs in Python, MATLAB, C++, Java, and PLC programming languages (ladder-logic and structured text, which is like PASCAL). I do a bit of Python and Julia programming now and dabbled in Rust but with little free time, I don't have time to do much more.
I'd love to switch over to software development but don't know how to manage the transition. I am willing to take a pay cut.
I have a PhD in chemical engineering and have done a lot of different things: control system engineering, biotech, semiconductor and MEMS fabrication, some aerospace, cryogenics and low temperature physics, vacuum system and surface science, etc. I think there are organizations that would appreciate that I need some investment but would pay it back with interest... difficult finding them, though.
Yes, and this is the difference between 'coding' and development, and then further on to engineering and ultimately architecture - the further in you go it is not about how to do, but what to do, and it becomes more about a way of thinking (in systems rather than tasks).
So the question isn't really if someone at 40 can learn to code, it is more if someone, at any age, who hasn't thought in terms of systems can grasp it.
I have met some people who can't code who understand systems in a way that would totally blow away most people, SV, London, Peru, wouldn't matter where you were.
I have also met people that can code endlessly, but couldn't architect a novel system arrangement if their family was being held to ransom, it's a way of thinking.
It used to be that a systems analyst was a profession all of it's own, not really at all any more, and it is my observation this is the really root cause of so many software projects failing.
The first step in any formal analysis is Problem Identification, but it is surprising how often people will spend tens, hundreds of millions of dollars and never formally go thru this essential first step, and are then basically better off buying lottery tickets than hoping for a successful project. (and then go on to blame the consultant, or the market, or the fickle users, when really it was them all the time but they just never realised it).
So code, phht, that is not even the entry ticket, more the uniform.
I'd love to switch over to software development but don't know how to manage the transition. I am willing to take a pay cut.
I have a PhD in chemical engineering and have done a lot of different things: control system engineering, biotech, semiconductor and MEMS fabrication, some aerospace, cryogenics and low temperature physics, vacuum system and surface science, etc. I think there are organizations that would appreciate that I need some investment but would pay it back with interest... difficult finding them, though.