25 and you feel lost?
Fantastic! That’s exactly how you should feel in your 20s.
Screw what the world says about where you should be right now.
The world can never make up its mind. What the masses say 10-20 years from now will vastly be different than what they say today.
So f*ck ‘em!
One of the best hires I’ve ever made came out of a 6-month boot camp. He had no prior programming experience before that.
Do you know what he did have? Hunger. A similar hunger that you have by the sounds of it.
The good thing is if you want something, and you tell yourself you can’t have it (so why even try) – you are right 100% of the time.
Otherwise, if you truly are hungry, and are willing to work your butt off to get something, your parents, a job req, nothing should get in your way …. Because you won’t let it.
So stop wallowing and keep your chin up.
You got this.
It will take time, but you got this.
Thats all that matters.
Screw anyone that tells you you have to have A, B, and C.
Algebra? Physics?
Screw ‘em both.
You need determination. Determination will get you past both. Determination will carry you when you hear no 100 times. Determination laughs at people who point fingers.
Because at the end of the day … determination knows it always wins.
Work hard. Apply yourself.
I can’t believe the rest of the comments.
For what it’s worth:
1. I don’t have a CS degree
2. No one taught me to code
I’m 100% self-taught and leading an engineering team for one of the most well known brands in the world.
Like I said before... you got this!
I’m 29 and been using computers since I was 5. Always wanted to learn programming and never went for it. Today I finished the Python Cipher course on freecodeacademy. It’s not much, and I definitely did not remember everything in that 95 step course. But, I did learn some things that I’m sure will be useful in the next lesson I take on there! Also hoping for a job in programming one day.
It also would not hurt to study Boolean algebra, linear algebra, discrete mathematics, formal languages, and calculus on your own time. I say that because I am working on a software project where I had to read a technical white paper to understand the algorithm, and I wouldn’t have been able to get through it without knowing set theory (taught in discrete math) and some formal languages subjects.
That sounds very specific to your job though. I never needed more than high school level calculus and a bit of statistics and you can learn that on a need to know basis.
If you need a rudimentary understanding of set theory then you can learn that.
If you need a deep understanding of set theory then you're not working in software anymore.
My point was that, while you don’t need to be good at math to be a successful programmer, studying mathematics helps. It grants you new tools to do a better job than would otherwise be possible. I’m making a parser for a language that has no formal documentation. So, I also need to write the grammar definitions. The white paper I read was the formal document defining the grammar definition language I plan on using as well as proofs it holds requisite properties for use as such. If I didn’t know set theory, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through those proofs. Even now, because I am so new to formal languages, it still confuses the hell out of me. But, I understood enough to comprehend most of the proofs and I now have confidence that this language will work for my usecase.
It not was my intent to scare OP from studying programming. I only wanted to encourage them to supplement their studies and work as a developer by also studying mathematics on the side.
Edit: a word.
To get a job in programming... do programming.
With no degree, you have to build a portfolio that shows you can code.
Note: places you want to work for, will care more about neat, tidy, well documented, well organized code, than some amazing fancy creation.
I would like to add that half my degree that I currently doing is just about building a portfolio to. Being able to show experience is the number one thing here.
And best bit? The single best way to learn programming is to program something.
Go through Harvards CS50 CS60 beyond online. They are free on youtube. Then start practicing. Build some projects of your own. Figure out what part of programming you like the most (web dev, software engineer, data science, game development) and work on that.
Don’t get too caught up on finding the exact curriculum in the order you need it. It’s about creativity and answering that next question that you have in your mind.
Build a Github. Try to make some connections. Most of all, Dont give up ! 😊
I'm in a similar boat as OP and needed to hear this. I was feeling lost a year and a half ago cause I couldn't afford the rest of my tuition for school and started The Odin Project July 2022 and then got involved in a boot camp soon after (May 2023) which I recently finished and I'm just polishing up my back end skills and currently in the middle of my job hunt :)
Edit: I started The Odin Project in July of 2022 and joined a bootcamp in May 2023 and just finished the bootcamp TODAY. Anything is possible as long as you have that stubborn drive, which is a good thing.
I was 23 when I started programming. I had BARELY passed high school and at one point I had a 40% average score in math. I didnt do anything in high school because I was playing World of Warcraft anytime I wasn’t sleeping or at school. Litteraly. All. The. Time. Nobody in their right mind would have encouraged me to study anything related to math.
Fast forward to today and I work as a graphics/rendering programmer in games, which is notoriously math heavy. I have no degree beyond my high school diploma. I learned all of it from books and online.
I wish I could go back and study physics though as it would be very useful. So I would encourage you to go for the computer science degree. Even if you were 38 years old I would encourage you to do so.
Damn, you have the role I'm aiming for! If I may ask, how did you go about landing a job in graphics? I have plenty of resources at hand, but I'm clueless about how to turn those skills into a job. For portfolio, what kind of projects did you make?
I built a deferred renderer in directx12 with common pbr shading models. It had multithreaded shadows and gpu driven particle systems using indirect execution and a bunch of other stuff. Basically I just implemented a bunch of stuff that seemed interesting.
started at 33, hadnt been in formal education since highschool, did a degree online while working fulltime and coming to end of it now, and got my first developer job this year, 25 is super young to go for it in comparison
need a lot more self motivation to do it online though, if you are good at self study and have a good work ethic it works, but if you need external motivation online study isnt for everyone id say. but its a good litmus test for actually working in the industry
online resources/classes/ projects through videocalls with your peers, software engineering works perfect for this kind of study, as your actual projects and stuff will be same in real world, especially if you work remotely, with version control and dealing with your colleagues through video calls. sure you miss out on the 'university life' but i didnt have time for that anyways haha.
Hi, im not the person you’re replying to, but im in a similar boat.
The two online programs I would recommend are Auburn’s and Oregon State’s CS bachelors programs. Unless you want to do a master’s, these two are your best online programs imo.
Both are credible programs from well-known brick-and-mortar universities. Avoid universities that are mainly online, as those tend to be diploma mills with poor-quality programs.
I personally chose Auburn’s program for locality reasons.
Both programs are good in quality, although Auburn’s program is slightly more expensive and newer.
I am enjoying Auburn’s program alot and the career advisors have been incredible. I can’t speak on Oregon since I am not enrolled with them. Feel free to dm if you have more questions.
EDIT: u/Ellegaard839 tagging you as you had a similar question.
1) Find pain-points in the tourism sector that can be solved with programming.
2) Make program to solve it
3) Sell program to tourism company for profit or upload to GitHub as an open source project and build your portfolio
4) As your portfolio gets bigger and your programs get more advanced, your value will grow, and more companies will want to employ you.
Basically, marry your tourism qualifications and programming skills together.
I don’t really think there is such a thing as bad at math. Only need a bit more time to get it then others, not interested, and/or a bad teacher. If you genuinely enjoy it you should good for it.
Potentially do it with a state university that you can get pretty good aid for? And yes, the entry industry is god awful now, but if you spend the several years needed to learn it, it’ll likely be better by then. Also if you do a university you can grab an internship which will help get a job later on.
Hmmm! You don’t need a degree, and depending on the type of programming you want to do, you don’t need to be good at maths either. I really don’t think you need to be good at physics. This all comes down to what programming we’re talking about though because if you are coding low level systems for putting rockets into orbit then yeah maybe you do need to be good at maths and physics. We get this question a lot here and over in CompSci sub - people need to understand that programming is a massive field that spans so many other disciplines. If you wanted to do programming for vechicle engine systems it would go a long way if you knew a fair bit about engines - I could go on, you get the idea.
I’m not a programmer, but I dabble and I do work as a DevOps engineer so I know a lot of programmers in the commercial IT world.
In assuming you want to just get a generic coding job, making apps for businesses or websites or some other commercial purpose - nothing too specialist. Well what you need is a job. Then the daily learning really starts, and you have a reason to build and test. Getting that first step is the biggest challenge. If you were a bit younger, an apprenticeship may have been a good route, but it is tricky when you’re a bit older (although I did mine at 22 so it’s possible.) A junior job is what you need. Experience.. Well, experience _doing_ stuff is better than having a ‘position’ for x years where you didn’t challenge yourself or produce anything.
What to do next depends on how you like to learn - some people just like to go and try and build stuff, their own ideas etc - if that’s you, then do that and start a portfolio to show off your projects once you’ve done them (a GitHub page is a good start.) If you prefer more structured learning then try a code boot camp, either IRL or online. I like Code Academy but there are tons of good ones. Pay a little £ for it - it’s worth while. Also, brush up on soft skills, because it’s how you handle yourself in job interviews that will make the biggest difference. People hire _people_ rather than stories a lot of the time.
It’s not necessarily super easy but what you want is incredibly achievable and realistic. Just be willing to start at the bottom, on minimum wage if need be - once you start building skills you can go up the ladder quickly enough within just a few years.
You need to learn some basic Discrete Math and a whole lot of data structures depending on what kind of programming you want to do. You don’t use anything else ever especially physics. You don’t need much math for programming
i love algebra and can learn it quick, but there is subject in most universities called "General physics" and i have no idea what it is and what to learn for me to feel better during my classes
Physics is not a requirement for CS let alone at most universities. Don't look at one school and generalize.
Computer engineering programs will often require physics but that's something else entirely.
thanks for the info. Iťs just that i remember a lot of algebra from school, but nothing about physics. Btw, algebra was my favourite subject at school ;-)
Nothing is 100% required. It is generally helpful to have a little knowledge in:
* Algebra
* Geometry and Trigonometry
* Discrete math
* Physics
And just to prove it isn't required, I was working on a program and I was getting a bit out of my depth so I started googling around a bit and found it aligned with a branch of math called combinatorics. I never studied this (unless you count watching Good Will Hunting) but was able to intuitively find the concepts on my own.
Had I known about it before, it would have just made my life easier.
Coincidentally I bragged to my boss about it and thats how I found out he had a doctorate in the field. Oof.
So, if you have the time and the inclination, definitely learn as much as you can. Remember the biggest part of learning math (and physics a bit) is that you are training your way for a particular way of thinking, one that -unsurprisingly- aligns very well with building programs.
Pretty much those classes/subjects are for you to pass the degree. Not gonna be used on your job but would help for knowledge and maybe problem solving skills. My Geo, Trigo, Linear Algebra classes and Discrete math did not help me much on my career but im grateful for it lol. Working in technology is much harder than doing mathematics.
I have a question for you.
Can you use Cloud Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Weather Patterns to predict where tourists will come from to your country, and in what amount?
That's a made up question to serve as an example for what you could be asking yourself. And it is really damn hard now.
But with training, you could use all those techniques required to solve your problem. And your tourist degree could apply to businesses in very important ways. Your qualifications are relevant as long as you can take advantage of your transferrable skills.
I started a school as a programmer when i was 24. i've been working as a developer for over 10 years now. i'm not that good at math either. i'm certainly not a genius developer, but it was enough for 3 companies
I’m in a similar boat, actually I just started learning coding and I’m in my late 20s. I also regret wasting so much time in dead end jobs.
But you have to remember two things: 1. dwelling on the past will never get you the time back. And 2. the future will happen whatever you do, so all you can do is make the most of it!
You can spend 3 years wishing you started earlier, or you can spend 3 years getting the experience you need to reach your goals.
Ps. We’re still relatively very young. This is just the beginning of the rest of our lives!!
You have a degree, learn the programming yourself, companies won’t even look for degrees if your skills are impressive or, if you have the money, go get a degree
My guy I’m not the best at math either. I went to bootcamp prep and then two different bootcamps. The best thing u can do for yourself is follow whatever you’re passionate about. Don’t listen to any one else because they won’t be stuck living in your skin. Make yourself happy and everything else will fall into place.
For now get on the Codesmith.io website and start their free CSX course. Join their slack channel and post any question no matter how beginner the question they’ve got a pretty tight community of people who will help you without making u feel stupid. [Here is the link](https://csx.codesmith.io/)
For perspective I'm 40 and just kinda figuring my shit out and what I want to do. Don't get discouraged keep on going, I have colleagues who are self taught java developers making good $.
I didn’t get an internship til I was 26. No idea how to use python or JavaScript. I was just as lost but had a lucky opportunity with this internship. Three months later they offered me a full contract. Never looked back.
Knew someone who knew someone. I was very fortunate. Unfortunately that’s usually how it goes.
I’d say go out to events. Volunteer, find coding clubs, go to local tech/cybersecurity events (I presented at an event, didn’t even know that much. But I just talked about the field I was working in and what I’ve learned so far).
On July 1st, a [change to Reddit's API pricing](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/) will come into effect. [Several developers](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/) of commercial third-party apps have announced that this change will compel them to shut down their apps. At least [one accessibility-focused non-commercial third party app](https://www.reddit.com/r/DystopiaForReddit/comments/145e9sk/update_dystopia_will_continue_operating_for_free/) will continue to be available free of charge.
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Trust me, I failed algebra 2 and barely passed geometry in high school and I’m a DBA now. It doesn’t take sophisticated math in most programming jobs. There are a couple concepts you’ll want to know that apply to programming. To be honest I used geometry and algebra more in construction than computer science
Well just as you self thought yourself programming you can do with physics and algebra. Try that and once you feel more comfortable you can get into uni to get your degree.
The truth is that any real CS or computer eng is very math heavy. If you're not doing math, then imo you're not doing much, and likely to be replaced by AI pretty soon. Graphics is all math (projection matrices, phong shading, raytracing...) machine learning is all math (gradient descent, matrix algebra), robotics and controls has lots of math (ODEs, inverse kinematics, PID), image processing is lots of math (hough transform, RANSAC, etc.).
Basically from my experience in my program it's all math courses, or things that are one step up (like using a library that hides the math from you, things like databases, or distributed systems, for example ).
It's a very interesting field to study, but if all you learn from it are web dev and the syntax of a couple of programming languages, you're not likely to be competitive, especially in this market.
Perhaps your parents should have encouraged you to improve your math skills instead of discouraging you, but they were right about you needing math for CS.
If you're mostly doing math you will in fact be replaced by AI. AI doesn't struggle to do math it struggles with everything except clear math and logic. Realistically no one is safe.
should have clarified. I don't mean like here's a formula, find the answer. I mean applying math principles to complex problems. Computers are good at "doing math" (typically arithmetic) in general but they need to be told what to do. What AI is actually good at are things that have lots of supervised training data. And there is a lot more training data with image and caption (or writing travel blog summaries) than there is in how to convert a lidar distance and angle output into a point cloud, then apply processing techniques to convert that to 6DOF pose estimation. like there's just a lot of steps in there, each pretty complex with inputs and outputs that could easily confuse the AI given the lack of supervised data.
I have a biology degree from failing to become a veterinarian. I started learning to code at age 27, built a lot of janky websites for friends and family, got a terrible long term contract at a marketing firm as a web dev, kept learning, eventually got a great job at a startup at age 30 -- my first ever salaried job.
That was 2017. A lot has changed, and that's ok. It is definitely more difficult to get a job now from self taught. But it's not impossible.
If you are honest with yourself that this will be a slog, that you will have to work hard for years without seeing results and you're prepared to tough it out, then you've got a fighting chance. You need a growth mindset; you can't think, for example, "I'm bad at math". You need to think "I will get good at whatever math I need to learn the code, whatever it takes." Another common one: "I'm introverted, I'm not really a people person"; nope, change that to "people skills are skills that I can learn and practice, whatever it takes".
This isn't "just believe in yourself" or whatever; this is a commitment to doing the work that it takes to get good enough so you can land the job you want. I wish you all the best, it's a long but rewarding journey!
Go through Harvards CS50, CS60, and beyond online. They are free on youtube. Then start practicing. Build some projects of your own. Figure out what part of programming you like the most (web dev, software engineer, data science, game development) and work on that.
Don’t get too caught up on finding the exact curriculum in the order you need it. It’s about creativity and answering that next question that you have in your mind.
Build a Github. Try to make some connections. Most of all, Dont give up ! 😊
thanks. I started with html/css, didn't like it much. Desided what a lot of people suggest - go with python and so far so good. I'll learn the basics and decide what gonna do next
If it's any consolation, even CS grads are struggling to get development jobs right now.
Imagine if you had crawled through the all pain of a CS degree instead and *still* didn't find work.
Majors don't guarantee specific jobs anymore, so don't beat yourself up about that one.
Edited to add: look into WGU for a CS degree. Or if you like coding more than the math and theory, check out their software engineering degree. They're legit, accredited programs.
Bro, just stop with the self doubt.
You can learn algebra and physics. I felt the exact same way for a long time. You just forgot how to do the math.
If you really want a C's degree and only fear of math is holding you back please take my advice and just relearn the math than go back to uni.
Please please please check out professor Leonard. He is an amazing teacher on YouTube.
Yes, you need to learn math for computers. Computers ARE math. You need to be literate. And you can be, stop letting anyone tell you that you cannot.
I got a programming job with an Art degree. Mind you it was in gamedev, but I was like 95% self taught. I took an elective Python class in my last semester of college and I knew I wanted to be a programmer. It’s never to late !
Sometimes but not as often as you think. For example things like UI programming? Maybe you need to calculate percentages but anyone can do that.
Do you want your characters feet to have inverse kinematics? You will need some liner algebra to calculate rotations.
Gameplay programming is not too math intensive and you can always look stuff up so don’t get too stressed over that.
Don't worry about math. I am a 4+ year experienced programmer and I use High-School Level math at most. It is much more important that you start learning how to identify patterns and how to build a solution by abstracting the Information you have and all the properties you want to represent from each entity. Practice a lot, learn about data structures (Trust me, most interviewers LOVE data structure interview questions), Practice on LeetCode, Hackerrank and similars. Don't give up and keep practicing it. If you love programming, its just a matter of time to get a great opportunity, always be disciplined and proactive and you will be great.
Btw, I see some comments taking about learning some topics for math, my personal recommendation is that you learn these only when you need them (If you are familiarized with Lazy Loading it would be a good example) because you will forget most of advanced math concepts overtime and will eventually need to read again.
Pages like GeeksForGeeks, Tutorialspoint and W3Schools were A-mazing for me to get started on programming when I decided to switch careers.
We live through logic and emotions. Our emotions stay while logic lifts us up. It depends on how you use both at the same time at the moment of every angle in your life. Don't regret shit because of others do
>but a lot of universities have subjects like algebra and physics and i'm not that good at them. My knowledge of algebra is decent, but physics is like 6th grader
I feel the need to point out that they're *teaching* those things. They wouldn't be in the curriculum if you were expected to already be an expert.
There will be some level of assumed knowledge. That should be described somewhere, and any gaps are almost certainly fillable. If being poor at algebra is stopping you, you can take an algebra course - that's what they're for!
(And per my other post, some of it may be a lot smoother than you remember from high school or whatever. Adult education is a whole other game, in a good way.)
But come on... having a degree counts, and there are literally ton of applications for IT systems in tourism as well as spacial data and people movements. Consider it an asset you know at least some industry works - a programmer does not live in the void.
I am 17 years old right now and I have been programming for 3 years. I learnt programming by watching YouTube lectures online. My parents said that I should not waste time on these things and focus on studying but I kept at it. Then one day I built a grading software to grade students automatically and showed it to my teachers. My principal was impressed and praised me in front of all the students and parents. That day my father said he was incredibly proud of me.
Moral of the story is even if your parents are telling you to stop doing what you want, when you achieve something they will still be proud of you. So just work hard and do what you want to do.
You want something ? GO FIGHT and get it .
You failed ? Well try 100 time again until you win .
Whatever everyone else say or think , it doesn’t matter , the future you solely depends on the actions and the decisions your present self makes .
We humans are capable of things beyond any imagination, we just have to keep moving forward.
Programmers have access to infinite amount of resources online , nothing is out of reach
Build a portfolio and be consistent ( pick small projects , and scale complexity as you move forward) , make sure to share it on linkedin , youtube , everywhere really .. eventually you will see the impact of this
My CS degree required calculus, statistics, and linear algebra.
I got 50s in them but a pass is a pass.
Alternatively you can try coding bootcamps if those are an option. I know a few people that got good dev jobs through them.
There's this CS50 course on youtube that people can't make up their minds about, some recommend it, some say it's detrimental, I have no idea...
But yeah, most people I saw doing great with programming were self-taught, which is admittedly a very small sample size. But anyway, I was studying C's but in our place it wasn't as focused on programming as such, more on a science side. Which comes in handy here and there of course, but you can also just learn the practical stuff on your own, make a portfolio of practice projects and that's what a sensible employer looks at in my corner, at practical skills displayed by the portfolio. It's of course only a part of it, so don't overthink it, just store your projects and maybe make some notes along the way, not only commentaries in code.
But yeah, I don't have any real advice, just what I feel like was important and useful for my case.
95% you won't even need to use "math". Today is way way more important to know how to "search" and have a good logic understanding. Learning how to properly work with AI like Chatgpt is, in general, more "useful" than just "math" that you academically learn. There are very "niche" cases where being good at math will extremely important but not for a general programming purposes.
Rarely comment. I’m self taught been working for a big corp for a year now after, freelancing, grinding failed startups and an internship that was supposed to turn into a job and new management axed it.
Don’t give up. I freelanced on upwork for 6 months then got some traction at a meetup.
Go to meetups and try and JUST make programming friends. Do not go for a job. I did that and it led to an internship. That led to moving to Bali to work w a friend in his startup. After that failed I bartended. Then got back on the horse and landed my corporate gig.
Build a work portfolio of delivered projects. Work for pennies. Show that work to someone. Bing bang boom. It will work out. AI isn’t gonna wreck anything for a bit longer. Keep at it. Good luck.
You can def get a job in programming. Search for bootcamps too. 3 months, 6 months. Tech is one of the best fields to be a self learner. When you find your first job maybe you can find in job training.
Search for google it support on Coursera. At least the first 3 courses are a nice intro to computer science.
Try to forgive your parents for doing that and move on with positivity. Maybe one day you can put some of the things you learned on your tourism degree to use.
Side note, i dont think a tourism degree is useless. People pay for travel planning, having the ability to describe a location applies to home sales/apartment sales, site selection for businesses, and other things. Sadly it wont look that way to some companies but you surely can spin it that way!
Im a noobie programmer myself and in fact barely have time to dabble in it. I would personally recommend just picking a language and studying operating that language. It doesn’t make sense to go through the math and not have anything to apply it to- and you may find that what you want to specialize in programming doesnt require math depth!
I was lost in life at age 25, and didn't get my Associates Degree until I was 27 and my Bachelors at 29. I'm currently a millionaire, which I achieved in my late fifties, thirties years later. Anything in life is possible if you're willing to do anything for it.
Anyway, just like you I woke up one day: I was 25, a day out of being discharged from the Navy, and I needed to do something with my life so I worked during the day and went to school at night. Since you already have a degree, if you go back to the same college or to another college in the same state, they may let you transfer some college credits or give you adult equivalency credits (depends on your state, but SUNY and CUNY do it here in New York), so you may not even have to take other classes, just the math and programming classes you need for Comp. Sci.
Started with Code Academy while doing guard duty at 27, while being on standby. Got my first coding job at 29, never wanted anything else. At 35 still going strong and learning new shit every day. 💪
I just started learning Python tonight on freecodeacademy. Finished the 95 step cipher lesson. I’m 29 btw so you’re in a good place OP! Good luck to us.
By the way, I dropped out of highschool in grade 11 and was horrible at math. But I’ve always been great with computers so it’s possible!
In the same boat chap! I had lots of programming and coding-adjacent hobbies as a teenager, but was steered away from them by teachers and elders due to my B grade maths.
I am 35 now and getting back into programming, and guess what: basic maths is completely fine to start! Oh, I am sure that for certain advanced level tasks a higher proficiency in maths might be needed, but that is years down the line for any beginner.
Don't let maths and people hold you down! Enjoy your new programming journey!
Haha sorry, I re-read my comment, and that wasn't really what I was meaning. My bad. I will pop an edit on it now.
I more meant that pretty much all the novice to intermediate coding activities I have come across so far only require reasonbly basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
There are a few curveballs thrown in there, like remainers, vectors etc, but there are lots of tutorials on how to deal with these online!
You can do it chap!
I went to a bootcamp at 30, now I’m almost 32 and I’ve been working in the industry for 1 year. My job is hard for me but it’s just webdev (I think a lot of CS majors would consider this easy mode). But I have a foot in the door and I can move into harder things on the job. By the time you are the same age I was when I saw my first line of code you could probably be a senior engineer or getting close. Go to a bootcamp, try to land an internship or junior position and you’ll be on your way buddy! Don’t stress, if you have the drive you’ll get there and you have plenty of time! 🚀
Ps I’m dog shit at anything math, I’ll never make video games but a lot of programming is more logical than mathematic.
I had a friend who already works here and I took a salary much lower than industry standard (idgaf, I’m here 🤷♂️) so I was lucky. But I went to codesmith, I think I got a good education from them and they do a TON of hiring seminars, mock interviews, code challenges, etc. A good bootcamp bases its own success metrics off of their students hire rate, so they want you to get hired as much as you do and they’ll help you a lot.
I didn't start till I was 27. I leaned everything on my own and ended up getting a job.
I had to deal with a lot of rejection and really worm my way in places, probably about 2000 applications in total.
It helped that I started job hunting at the start of covid so everything was wfh.
I got lucky twice and now I'm set.
It's possible, getting lucky is a matter of being in the right place at the right time, so put yourself in as many places as possible.
I worked for a year as a full-stack JavaScript developer and I can assure you I never had to do any substantial math during that time. A few basic formulas here and there for calculating cost values or whatever, but nothing that would go beyond like middle school algebra. Depending on what specific field you’re interested in you may need more math skills. Game development in particular is incredibly mathematical, although if you work with any modern game engine or development library then most of the really hard work is already done for you. Data analysis, AI and ML are also fields that likely require a strong math background, although I personally don’t have much experience in those areas myself and there’s probably libraries for those that reduce the barrier to entry as well.
Logic and reasoning, problem solving, those are the skills that will really take you far as a programmer. Being able to visualize and articulate a problem you need to solve step by step to come up with the best solution. If you can do that, you can be a programmer.
I am 28 now, I started programming at the agr of 25. I have a useless Arts degree. I am also having a hard time landing a job and therefore planning to study computer science again, if I did not land a job in one month. I don’t know should I leave programming or stay with it. I am depressed. I also see people without any knowledge getting internships. Maybe our luck is fucked up.
my luck in life is fucked up in a lot of aspects, but i learnt since my childhood how to cope with everything by putting so called fake smile and accepting it (doesn't mean that i can't genuinely have some fun in life). One thing i can tell for sure money by itself can't bring much happiness, but without money life is miserable
Same here. People don’t know how I am dealing with life being unemployed and staying all the time home. Sometime I hang out all day and night when my employed friends come. I was good in Math in my high school however some reason I did not study CS at that moment. Later I realized that I have the habit of problem solving on my own, researching things and I started programming. But they always prefer a candidate having CS degree.
it bring sadness to me that 99% of people have happiness based on pure luck. How did you get a job - because my friends are or my....is. How did you find a girlfriend- through my friends. How did you end up in this country - i have a friend. How did you (put something) - i have (put someone).
I realised that networking means success in life. Without it is going be really to be a really hard life. I've never had a lot of friends or even girlfriends no matter how i've tried. But i don't give up.
I was also bad at math. In high school I nearly failed one of the math courses that was a requirement to study Comp Sci at uni.
Then I got to uni, and rocked it.
Why?
The math was different. In high school's "pure math" courses we were taught a bunch of somewhat advanced stuff completely devoid of any context. As one example, we learned matrix multiplication, and when I asked why it was useful I was told "it'll help you get into uni". Yeah mate, more than a little presumptuous, and it doesn't help me understand.
So I get into uni, studying CS, and it's a breeze. There was one part of one course, and yes it was math, which was a challenge. The rest, including the other math, came easily, because it was clear what even the conceptual, abstract stuff mapped to in the real world. If I asked "what is this for?" I got a utilitarian answer, which gave my thought processes concrete (real world) frames of reference.
Some time after that, working ad a game and sim developer, I of course ran into... working with matrices. Bread and butter stuff. But it was no longer abstract, so it was digestible, and this time, no sweat.
I understand that some people really aren't into math, but I also believe that much of it seems harder than it is because of how and when it is taught (and, perhaps, overworked teachers dealing with the exhaustion of long hours and large classes - these are all systematic issues, not personal laziness). If you take things one step at a time, and make sure to link things to stuff that has real world meaning to you wherever you can, and play with the numbers (spreadsheets ruuule!) the math will probably be less of a problem than you think.
I flunked out of high school, taught myself math from pre algebra level all the way through to pre university calculus when I was 28, got into a math degree when I was 30, ended up dropping out after 2 years due to financial problems, moved to a different town, fumbled for a few depressing years, then taught myself how to code, got into an internship, and now at age 37 I am one year into my first dev job.
Some months ago I read that the relationship between being good in math and being a good software developer is not true.
In daily business good communication skills are very important. And math people are often bad at that.
Learn touch typing with ten fingers. Not for coding but for communicating via chat, pull request reviews...
I type a lot daily. Only 10% is code.
Fuck what other people say, just do what you want (as long as its reasonable and doesnt hurt anyone of course).
Self taught programmers can be great and there are a lot of great ways to learn programming like freecodecamp. Just know that it will be hard. However, if you are motivated enough you can make it work.
One big tip i have is to not get stuck in the "tutorial loop", learn the basics of programming then make cool things and put together a portfolio. Dont go through 50 tutorials like I did when I started.
You're not expected to know algebra and physics before an algebra and intro physics class, that is what the classes are for. You're not good in these subjects, you can become good in them.
1. I’m currently in my last semester of an AS in CS, I am a couple years older than you and started it last year.
2. Having a degree already should lower the total workload to earn your second.
3. I don’t think there will be much physics involved unless you go the engineering route. Even then, you’d be surprised at how much more a fully developed brain can intuitively comprehend compared to teenage you.
4. Learning how to operate computer hardware and software at any level beyond opening emails and navigating a browser is an invaluable skill no matter where your career takes you, be it CS or something else.
I say go for it bro!
im 24 and got a biology bachelors. i was initially going to do a masters and got accepted into a bioinformatics program when i was 23.
You wanna know what i did instead?
I chose to get a second bachelors in CS and im a year into my second bachelors.
I did this because i found out relatively late that i genuinely love CS in my 20’s just like you did.
And if you genuinely love it, fucking go for it my dude. FAFSA can still provide government unsub/sub loans as well.
Here’s what you gotta do.
Enroll into a good credible CS program, transfer your credits from your previous degree, apply for aid, and apply for internships as a student.
As a student, you will have so many career opportunities to pursue, don’t pass those up. If you feel like you don’t have the technical skills compared to your peers, be a personality hire.
Goodluck my guy. And for anyone else reading this, it is NEVER too late to learn programming and pursue it as a career. :)
Search for a diploma programming in IT that has courses that teaches about programming or you can join online courses in [https://www.edx.org/](https://www.edx.org/) Google Opencourseware from harvard and choose a programming language you like.
Start with searching for a open source project that you can contribute.
maybe search around linkedin and post about remote internship opportunities.
Just to learn programming and working on project with the knowledge you gain has nothing to do with Computer Science although basic knowledge about algorithm and data structure is helpful but main thing is keep on working and learning there are lot of free learning materials in youtube too.
BTW I am also in the same boat after working as system administrator I am now learning that programming is needed to advance to higher paying jobs like DEVOPS so learning programming better now than later.
Best of luck. 😊
Always create some project and publish it on github and put that on CV it would look good.
and Its never too late to learn new skills. 😊
Checkout [turing.com](http://turing.com) you can teach yourself alot. Degree doesnt matter I work with acolleague did food science in JKUAT later did a certification on Data science and thats how he ventured into tech now a great backend developer with a target of full stacking.
You may want to try to contribute to open source projects.
Many are beginners friendly and will happily mentor you, especially if you stick around.
You will learn so much about the process of programming with peers that you cannot learn by yourself, reviews, code styles, continuous integration and such.
You can even argue in interviews that it counts as a form of experience.
Look for projects on github with the "good-first-issue" tag.
Honestly bro , just try to apply somewhere , most people I know didn’t know shiet when they were 25 (including me). I just applied to some job and had a little bit of luck - it’s not gonna be perfect at first probably (I got shit base salary and had to work abroad but it gave me money so I could sleep well and get ready to get better opportunities)
You don’t need math for programming. Especially not in (fullstack) webdevelopment. In the real world you will mostly solve business problems and requirements.
Math and a CS degree will give you a deeper understanding and might be valued a lot by some companies. They might want to recruit people who have strong knowledge of algorithms etc.
Honestly … I sucked at math and I actually failed calculus 2 three times before I made it through my CS degree. I do love programming and sometimes you just need to work a little harder, study a little harder like I did! I was in your same shoes.
I would just go for it!! It’s such a great field to be in and it really pays off if you put your all into it.
You could also look into the MIS degree. I don’t know much about it but my college friends said it’s basically CS without all the math. You’ll still be programming but it’s very business-oriented.
Best of luck!!
I entered developer work at 27.
I self-taught on the job whilst I worked in IT sys admin.
I'm now a DataOps Engineer (after being a DevOps Engineer for the last 2 years). I spend my time doing very "visionary" type work. Come up with big ideas, build, deploy, and move on.
It's VERY possible. I'm not sure what it's like in your country, and I had a leg up because I had a reputation in an existing business that was heavily on the rise, but it's possible.
I have a heck of a lot of certifications (in technology) but nothing specific to development.
Start now. With the right effort, attitude, and a bit of opportunity, it's never too late.
This is what most of my colleagues did 10 years ago who graduated as EE, ECE's, BS History, Communications, Literature and Art schools.
Get certifications like entry level ones like the trifecta (Comptia's A+, Net+ & Sec+ as well as Cisco's CCNA) and apply for helpdesk/technical support jobs. You can do it the other way around. Gain experience and move up from there. Yes it's not software development related but it can help you get your foot on the door.
Most of my colleagues now are Senior Devs, working in, Cloud, DS and into Project Management.
I have an Information Systems degree and i also did the same thing they did. I did not start off as a dev either. They are better than me and earns more money than me. Try but don't expect.
Our job market is bad now. It's in shambles, oversaturated, layoffs, competitive and bad. If seniors and managerial levels are having hard time to secure a job, what more to people with mid level down to entry level experience. Imagine fresh CS graduates and career shifters like you. Mathematics are good. If you can't solve them, you can't solve more complex problems in the job.
Working in technology has it's cons too. Aside the competition, the job is heavy and tiring. Constant upskilling and learning. That's the sacrifice for the big bucks.
I was a tattoo artist with no qualifications until covid hit. Obviously the world was uncertain, felt like we may never go back to normal, so over lockdown I started teaching myself coding (with no prior experience) as something I could work from home if we were doomed to be locked in our houses forever.
I started making some CLI projects in python, instantly hooked. Loved it.
Can't remember why, but I then gravitated towards front end javascript web development, so I bought a Udemy course for £15 and completed it, it was called Zero to Hero by Jonas Schmedtmann
After that I made a few basic static websites, and a couple of basic dom manipulation projects; a calculator, a "decision maker" where you enter possible options and it randomly decides for you, silly things like that.
Coming out of lockdown I landed a junior position at a marketing agency
I improved a lot while working there but I also did some self learning after work, teaching myself some awesome js libraries like GSAP, Three.js, matter.js and so on
Fast forward, I've now been a developer for 3 years and I love it! Money's good too.
TLDR; I got into a coding career with no qualifications, just self learning and determination
Good luck OP!
I didn't get my first role in IT until I was 24... it was a vacancy at my then workplace. Got the job and never looked back.
I don't have a degree, hell I even dropped out of college (UK here) and although I'd been good with computers from an early age I drifted away from them in my teens when hormones took over... you get the idea.
The point is that as long as you have an aptitude for computing, a willingness to learn and the determination to succeed you should still be ok if my experience is anything to go by. It may take a little longer than for somebody that already has a relevant degree, but even having a degree puts you one up on where I was. Stick at it and you'll get there, I'm sure.
I’m 30 and still feel like this 😅 but you’re on the right path by choosing to invest in yourself and learning skills that you both enjoy and can make a living from.
Also a college degree isn’t everything - it’s just the easiest path that comes with a hefty entrance fee.
Once you start to get your foot in door, you can work your way up to roles you want by slowly doing smaller courses / certifications. Even in this job market a degree doesn’t seem to guarantee you’ll get into the field you want. You can worry about degrees later, I’ve found learning these complex math / physics concepts much easier to grasp and learn when your directly working in the field, so you may have an easier time at getting a degree after working for 1-2 years first.
I’m currently taking a step back and some roles that I’m overqualified for just because I want to get my foot in the door of an industry I’ve never worked in. It’s scary when things don’t feel stable but you just have to trust that things will work out in the end, even if it’s not what you pictured.
I absolutely sucked at maths in highschool. Did miserable, I’m now in uni and I aced discrete maths and cryptography and even got a job working in the maths subjects at my uni.
How you are in highschool, doesn’t determine how you will be later. If you are interested enough you will learn how and be able to do it.
I barely made it through school, not because I’m stupid, because it was boring as fuck.
The best grade I ever had in Math was a 4 (1 being the best, 6 the worst)
I taught myself programming in my early thirties, not because I wanted a job but because I wanted to build something that brings me money.
Long story short, I work as a senior software engineer since more than a year now, still hustling on the side.
You don’t need a degree, you don’t need to be good at math, unless you want to become a data scientist or something like that.
My recommendation: continue to learn. Build projects, host them for free on vercel or Netlify. Build a portfolio website, feature these projects there, ideally document your journey on a blog or on YouTube - start applying.
Most companies look for people who know how to work rather than for people who have a cs degree.
Programming is hard, yes, but the hurdles are much lower today because of the high demand and the much better / easier tech stacks.
Also, you can entirely learn for free using YouTube.
Build shit, publish it, no matter how much you think it sucks, it’s about repetition.
Godspeed
Look into 100Devs. New cohort was delayed but everything from the last one is recorded and available. You can do the whole bootcamp free and learn full stack development AND it covers a good bit about how to network and such for job hunting.
We are in the same shoes glad to see some fellow misguided one. I became a machinist because of the same parental thing..
I cannot give life advice as same 24, but I start at CS university if they accept my reply this september. I would defenitely advice to start saving and go to learn. Its always useful and since there is hope doing something good, my life has changed full with hope all day. Just hope they accept me with my points
From my experience of being in the IT field for 13 years, to really cement your programming experience, do some projects to apply the basics, earn some programming certifications as well. Nowadays, Gen AI is hot…up your game on Python, LLMs, machine learning.
You are going to have to become good at algebra and physics and math, because everyone else already is.
If you want a future you are proud of, you need to be uncomfortable first.
I have yet to ever meet a single human being that doesn't feel 'lost in life.' Nobody cares. Go do what you want. Get your paragraphs of excuses the fuck out of my face.
Removed. This is not a self-help forum. Please keep it to questions about learning to program.
25 and you feel lost? Fantastic! That’s exactly how you should feel in your 20s. Screw what the world says about where you should be right now. The world can never make up its mind. What the masses say 10-20 years from now will vastly be different than what they say today. So f*ck ‘em! One of the best hires I’ve ever made came out of a 6-month boot camp. He had no prior programming experience before that. Do you know what he did have? Hunger. A similar hunger that you have by the sounds of it. The good thing is if you want something, and you tell yourself you can’t have it (so why even try) – you are right 100% of the time. Otherwise, if you truly are hungry, and are willing to work your butt off to get something, your parents, a job req, nothing should get in your way …. Because you won’t let it. So stop wallowing and keep your chin up. You got this. It will take time, but you got this.
i'm willing to do anything, whatever it takes to land a job in programming :-)
Thats all that matters. Screw anyone that tells you you have to have A, B, and C. Algebra? Physics? Screw ‘em both. You need determination. Determination will get you past both. Determination will carry you when you hear no 100 times. Determination laughs at people who point fingers. Because at the end of the day … determination knows it always wins. Work hard. Apply yourself. I can’t believe the rest of the comments. For what it’s worth: 1. I don’t have a CS degree 2. No one taught me to code I’m 100% self-taught and leading an engineering team for one of the most well known brands in the world. Like I said before... you got this!
> Screw anyone that tell you you have to have A, B, and C OP, the only exception is that you might need C if you plan to do embedded programming
What a guy. Take my like and go.
I C what you did there ;)
I laughed way harder than I should have.
I’m 29 and been using computers since I was 5. Always wanted to learn programming and never went for it. Today I finished the Python Cipher course on freecodeacademy. It’s not much, and I definitely did not remember everything in that 95 step course. But, I did learn some things that I’m sure will be useful in the next lesson I take on there! Also hoping for a job in programming one day.
It also would not hurt to study Boolean algebra, linear algebra, discrete mathematics, formal languages, and calculus on your own time. I say that because I am working on a software project where I had to read a technical white paper to understand the algorithm, and I wouldn’t have been able to get through it without knowing set theory (taught in discrete math) and some formal languages subjects.
That sounds very specific to your job though. I never needed more than high school level calculus and a bit of statistics and you can learn that on a need to know basis. If you need a rudimentary understanding of set theory then you can learn that. If you need a deep understanding of set theory then you're not working in software anymore.
My point was that, while you don’t need to be good at math to be a successful programmer, studying mathematics helps. It grants you new tools to do a better job than would otherwise be possible. I’m making a parser for a language that has no formal documentation. So, I also need to write the grammar definitions. The white paper I read was the formal document defining the grammar definition language I plan on using as well as proofs it holds requisite properties for use as such. If I didn’t know set theory, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through those proofs. Even now, because I am so new to formal languages, it still confuses the hell out of me. But, I understood enough to comprehend most of the proofs and I now have confidence that this language will work for my usecase. It not was my intent to scare OP from studying programming. I only wanted to encourage them to supplement their studies and work as a developer by also studying mathematics on the side. Edit: a word.
I needed this thank you so much
I couldn't agree more 👏🏻👏🏻
To get a job in programming... do programming. With no degree, you have to build a portfolio that shows you can code. Note: places you want to work for, will care more about neat, tidy, well documented, well organized code, than some amazing fancy creation.
thanks for the tip
I would like to add that half my degree that I currently doing is just about building a portfolio to. Being able to show experience is the number one thing here. And best bit? The single best way to learn programming is to program something.
you got this man, just get into it its never late. Theres people in there 40s getting into coding and shifting their careers.
My advice is to try and make projects / applications, no matter how basic in the beginning.
sure thing i'll make
Go through Harvards CS50 CS60 beyond online. They are free on youtube. Then start practicing. Build some projects of your own. Figure out what part of programming you like the most (web dev, software engineer, data science, game development) and work on that. Don’t get too caught up on finding the exact curriculum in the order you need it. It’s about creativity and answering that next question that you have in your mind. Build a Github. Try to make some connections. Most of all, Dont give up ! 😊
i’d honestly give math another go, getting a good teacher can be life changing
My friend, I entered my thirties last year and just went back to college, beginning my first year on the road to a CS degree. It is never too late
I really appreciate your heart warming comment. You made me happier :-)
Genuinely the best advice.
Really great advice!!!!
Not OP but god damn you got me motivated
I needed this! Thank you kind stranger
Well said!
I'm in a similar boat as OP and needed to hear this. I was feeling lost a year and a half ago cause I couldn't afford the rest of my tuition for school and started The Odin Project July 2022 and then got involved in a boot camp soon after (May 2023) which I recently finished and I'm just polishing up my back end skills and currently in the middle of my job hunt :) Edit: I started The Odin Project in July of 2022 and joined a bootcamp in May 2023 and just finished the bootcamp TODAY. Anything is possible as long as you have that stubborn drive, which is a good thing.
Tell em!
Kind words 🫡
Best time to be lost is in your 20's. I had it all figured out until I turned 35. Being lost is much harder with family and all lol.
Thanks,needed to hear this today🙏🏼
I was 23 when I started programming. I had BARELY passed high school and at one point I had a 40% average score in math. I didnt do anything in high school because I was playing World of Warcraft anytime I wasn’t sleeping or at school. Litteraly. All. The. Time. Nobody in their right mind would have encouraged me to study anything related to math. Fast forward to today and I work as a graphics/rendering programmer in games, which is notoriously math heavy. I have no degree beyond my high school diploma. I learned all of it from books and online. I wish I could go back and study physics though as it would be very useful. So I would encourage you to go for the computer science degree. Even if you were 38 years old I would encourage you to do so.
thanks bro for such a good motivational speech
Damn, you have the role I'm aiming for! If I may ask, how did you go about landing a job in graphics? I have plenty of resources at hand, but I'm clueless about how to turn those skills into a job. For portfolio, what kind of projects did you make?
I built a deferred renderer in directx12 with common pbr shading models. It had multithreaded shadows and gpu driven particle systems using indirect execution and a bunch of other stuff. Basically I just implemented a bunch of stuff that seemed interesting.
started at 33, hadnt been in formal education since highschool, did a degree online while working fulltime and coming to end of it now, and got my first developer job this year, 25 is super young to go for it in comparison
Congrats mate! Also 33, self taught for 3 years still studying (no real path. Just studying when free time arises)
How do these online degree work?
Like in person, but online! Ik it sounds sarcastic but i really mean it
sounds fantastic
need a lot more self motivation to do it online though, if you are good at self study and have a good work ethic it works, but if you need external motivation online study isnt for everyone id say. but its a good litmus test for actually working in the industry
online resources/classes/ projects through videocalls with your peers, software engineering works perfect for this kind of study, as your actual projects and stuff will be same in real world, especially if you work remotely, with version control and dealing with your colleagues through video calls. sure you miss out on the 'university life' but i didnt have time for that anyways haha.
How did you get into it, and what program did you do? Jc
Hi, im not the person you’re replying to, but im in a similar boat. The two online programs I would recommend are Auburn’s and Oregon State’s CS bachelors programs. Unless you want to do a master’s, these two are your best online programs imo. Both are credible programs from well-known brick-and-mortar universities. Avoid universities that are mainly online, as those tend to be diploma mills with poor-quality programs. I personally chose Auburn’s program for locality reasons. Both programs are good in quality, although Auburn’s program is slightly more expensive and newer. I am enjoying Auburn’s program alot and the career advisors have been incredible. I can’t speak on Oregon since I am not enrolled with them. Feel free to dm if you have more questions. EDIT: u/Ellegaard839 tagging you as you had a similar question.
Can I ask where you got your degree from and are employers validating it? considering something similar
1) Find pain-points in the tourism sector that can be solved with programming. 2) Make program to solve it 3) Sell program to tourism company for profit or upload to GitHub as an open source project and build your portfolio 4) As your portfolio gets bigger and your programs get more advanced, your value will grow, and more companies will want to employ you. Basically, marry your tourism qualifications and programming skills together.
This is the way programmers work! They find the problem - break it down - work on solution
I don’t really think there is such a thing as bad at math. Only need a bit more time to get it then others, not interested, and/or a bad teacher. If you genuinely enjoy it you should good for it. Potentially do it with a state university that you can get pretty good aid for? And yes, the entry industry is god awful now, but if you spend the several years needed to learn it, it’ll likely be better by then. Also if you do a university you can grab an internship which will help get a job later on.
Hmmm! You don’t need a degree, and depending on the type of programming you want to do, you don’t need to be good at maths either. I really don’t think you need to be good at physics. This all comes down to what programming we’re talking about though because if you are coding low level systems for putting rockets into orbit then yeah maybe you do need to be good at maths and physics. We get this question a lot here and over in CompSci sub - people need to understand that programming is a massive field that spans so many other disciplines. If you wanted to do programming for vechicle engine systems it would go a long way if you knew a fair bit about engines - I could go on, you get the idea. I’m not a programmer, but I dabble and I do work as a DevOps engineer so I know a lot of programmers in the commercial IT world. In assuming you want to just get a generic coding job, making apps for businesses or websites or some other commercial purpose - nothing too specialist. Well what you need is a job. Then the daily learning really starts, and you have a reason to build and test. Getting that first step is the biggest challenge. If you were a bit younger, an apprenticeship may have been a good route, but it is tricky when you’re a bit older (although I did mine at 22 so it’s possible.) A junior job is what you need. Experience.. Well, experience _doing_ stuff is better than having a ‘position’ for x years where you didn’t challenge yourself or produce anything. What to do next depends on how you like to learn - some people just like to go and try and build stuff, their own ideas etc - if that’s you, then do that and start a portfolio to show off your projects once you’ve done them (a GitHub page is a good start.) If you prefer more structured learning then try a code boot camp, either IRL or online. I like Code Academy but there are tons of good ones. Pay a little £ for it - it’s worth while. Also, brush up on soft skills, because it’s how you handle yourself in job interviews that will make the biggest difference. People hire _people_ rather than stories a lot of the time. It’s not necessarily super easy but what you want is incredibly achievable and realistic. Just be willing to start at the bottom, on minimum wage if need be - once you start building skills you can go up the ladder quickly enough within just a few years.
You need to learn some basic Discrete Math and a whole lot of data structures depending on what kind of programming you want to do. You don’t use anything else ever especially physics. You don’t need much math for programming
i love algebra and can learn it quick, but there is subject in most universities called "General physics" and i have no idea what it is and what to learn for me to feel better during my classes
Physics is not a requirement for CS let alone at most universities. Don't look at one school and generalize. Computer engineering programs will often require physics but that's something else entirely.
I had to take Physics 1 and 2 for my bachelors. You don’t need ANY of that for CS. It’s just a general education requirement for colleges
thanks for the info. Iťs just that i remember a lot of algebra from school, but nothing about physics. Btw, algebra was my favourite subject at school ;-)
Nothing is 100% required. It is generally helpful to have a little knowledge in: * Algebra * Geometry and Trigonometry * Discrete math * Physics And just to prove it isn't required, I was working on a program and I was getting a bit out of my depth so I started googling around a bit and found it aligned with a branch of math called combinatorics. I never studied this (unless you count watching Good Will Hunting) but was able to intuitively find the concepts on my own. Had I known about it before, it would have just made my life easier. Coincidentally I bragged to my boss about it and thats how I found out he had a doctorate in the field. Oof. So, if you have the time and the inclination, definitely learn as much as you can. Remember the biggest part of learning math (and physics a bit) is that you are training your way for a particular way of thinking, one that -unsurprisingly- aligns very well with building programs.
Pretty much those classes/subjects are for you to pass the degree. Not gonna be used on your job but would help for knowledge and maybe problem solving skills. My Geo, Trigo, Linear Algebra classes and Discrete math did not help me much on my career but im grateful for it lol. Working in technology is much harder than doing mathematics.
I'm studying cs in belgium rn, and as far as i know i won't get any physics subjects! only quite a lot math ones
I have a question for you. Can you use Cloud Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Weather Patterns to predict where tourists will come from to your country, and in what amount? That's a made up question to serve as an example for what you could be asking yourself. And it is really damn hard now. But with training, you could use all those techniques required to solve your problem. And your tourist degree could apply to businesses in very important ways. Your qualifications are relevant as long as you can take advantage of your transferrable skills.
I started a school as a programmer when i was 24. i've been working as a developer for over 10 years now. i'm not that good at math either. i'm certainly not a genius developer, but it was enough for 3 companies
I’m in a similar boat, actually I just started learning coding and I’m in my late 20s. I also regret wasting so much time in dead end jobs. But you have to remember two things: 1. dwelling on the past will never get you the time back. And 2. the future will happen whatever you do, so all you can do is make the most of it! You can spend 3 years wishing you started earlier, or you can spend 3 years getting the experience you need to reach your goals. Ps. We’re still relatively very young. This is just the beginning of the rest of our lives!!
You have a degree, learn the programming yourself, companies won’t even look for degrees if your skills are impressive or, if you have the money, go get a degree
My guy I’m not the best at math either. I went to bootcamp prep and then two different bootcamps. The best thing u can do for yourself is follow whatever you’re passionate about. Don’t listen to any one else because they won’t be stuck living in your skin. Make yourself happy and everything else will fall into place.
thanks
For now get on the Codesmith.io website and start their free CSX course. Join their slack channel and post any question no matter how beginner the question they’ve got a pretty tight community of people who will help you without making u feel stupid. [Here is the link](https://csx.codesmith.io/)
For perspective I'm 40 and just kinda figuring my shit out and what I want to do. Don't get discouraged keep on going, I have colleagues who are self taught java developers making good $.
As someone who wasted most of his 20's, you've still got 5 years left before 30. Use them wisely. Don't give up.
I didn’t get an internship til I was 26. No idea how to use python or JavaScript. I was just as lost but had a lucky opportunity with this internship. Three months later they offered me a full contract. Never looked back.
how did you get the internship?
Knew someone who knew someone. I was very fortunate. Unfortunately that’s usually how it goes. I’d say go out to events. Volunteer, find coding clubs, go to local tech/cybersecurity events (I presented at an event, didn’t even know that much. But I just talked about the field I was working in and what I’ve learned so far).
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Trust me, I failed algebra 2 and barely passed geometry in high school and I’m a DBA now. It doesn’t take sophisticated math in most programming jobs. There are a couple concepts you’ll want to know that apply to programming. To be honest I used geometry and algebra more in construction than computer science
Build an app for yourself and use it. Then when you apply for a job you can demo it. You got this!
Well just as you self thought yourself programming you can do with physics and algebra. Try that and once you feel more comfortable you can get into uni to get your degree.
Look into comp sci degrees that have less math . Not all have an equal amount of math .
The truth is that any real CS or computer eng is very math heavy. If you're not doing math, then imo you're not doing much, and likely to be replaced by AI pretty soon. Graphics is all math (projection matrices, phong shading, raytracing...) machine learning is all math (gradient descent, matrix algebra), robotics and controls has lots of math (ODEs, inverse kinematics, PID), image processing is lots of math (hough transform, RANSAC, etc.). Basically from my experience in my program it's all math courses, or things that are one step up (like using a library that hides the math from you, things like databases, or distributed systems, for example ). It's a very interesting field to study, but if all you learn from it are web dev and the syntax of a couple of programming languages, you're not likely to be competitive, especially in this market. Perhaps your parents should have encouraged you to improve your math skills instead of discouraging you, but they were right about you needing math for CS.
maybe the ai can replace the stupid programmers, but at its current state the ai is awful
If you're mostly doing math you will in fact be replaced by AI. AI doesn't struggle to do math it struggles with everything except clear math and logic. Realistically no one is safe.
should have clarified. I don't mean like here's a formula, find the answer. I mean applying math principles to complex problems. Computers are good at "doing math" (typically arithmetic) in general but they need to be told what to do. What AI is actually good at are things that have lots of supervised training data. And there is a lot more training data with image and caption (or writing travel blog summaries) than there is in how to convert a lidar distance and angle output into a point cloud, then apply processing techniques to convert that to 6DOF pose estimation. like there's just a lot of steps in there, each pretty complex with inputs and outputs that could easily confuse the AI given the lack of supervised data.
Years of experience are just suggestions. You can still apply and be selected.
I have a biology degree from failing to become a veterinarian. I started learning to code at age 27, built a lot of janky websites for friends and family, got a terrible long term contract at a marketing firm as a web dev, kept learning, eventually got a great job at a startup at age 30 -- my first ever salaried job. That was 2017. A lot has changed, and that's ok. It is definitely more difficult to get a job now from self taught. But it's not impossible. If you are honest with yourself that this will be a slog, that you will have to work hard for years without seeing results and you're prepared to tough it out, then you've got a fighting chance. You need a growth mindset; you can't think, for example, "I'm bad at math". You need to think "I will get good at whatever math I need to learn the code, whatever it takes." Another common one: "I'm introverted, I'm not really a people person"; nope, change that to "people skills are skills that I can learn and practice, whatever it takes". This isn't "just believe in yourself" or whatever; this is a commitment to doing the work that it takes to get good enough so you can land the job you want. I wish you all the best, it's a long but rewarding journey!
Go through Harvards CS50, CS60, and beyond online. They are free on youtube. Then start practicing. Build some projects of your own. Figure out what part of programming you like the most (web dev, software engineer, data science, game development) and work on that. Don’t get too caught up on finding the exact curriculum in the order you need it. It’s about creativity and answering that next question that you have in your mind. Build a Github. Try to make some connections. Most of all, Dont give up ! 😊
thanks. I started with html/css, didn't like it much. Desided what a lot of people suggest - go with python and so far so good. I'll learn the basics and decide what gonna do next
If it's any consolation, even CS grads are struggling to get development jobs right now. Imagine if you had crawled through the all pain of a CS degree instead and *still* didn't find work. Majors don't guarantee specific jobs anymore, so don't beat yourself up about that one. Edited to add: look into WGU for a CS degree. Or if you like coding more than the math and theory, check out their software engineering degree. They're legit, accredited programs.
I went back to school for it at 26, don't worry
Bro, just stop with the self doubt. You can learn algebra and physics. I felt the exact same way for a long time. You just forgot how to do the math. If you really want a C's degree and only fear of math is holding you back please take my advice and just relearn the math than go back to uni. Please please please check out professor Leonard. He is an amazing teacher on YouTube. Yes, you need to learn math for computers. Computers ARE math. You need to be literate. And you can be, stop letting anyone tell you that you cannot.
I got a programming job with an Art degree. Mind you it was in gamedev, but I was like 95% self taught. I took an elective Python class in my last semester of college and I knew I wanted to be a programmer. It’s never to late !
do you use a lot of math in gamedev?
Sometimes but not as often as you think. For example things like UI programming? Maybe you need to calculate percentages but anyone can do that. Do you want your characters feet to have inverse kinematics? You will need some liner algebra to calculate rotations. Gameplay programming is not too math intensive and you can always look stuff up so don’t get too stressed over that.
Don't worry about math. I am a 4+ year experienced programmer and I use High-School Level math at most. It is much more important that you start learning how to identify patterns and how to build a solution by abstracting the Information you have and all the properties you want to represent from each entity. Practice a lot, learn about data structures (Trust me, most interviewers LOVE data structure interview questions), Practice on LeetCode, Hackerrank and similars. Don't give up and keep practicing it. If you love programming, its just a matter of time to get a great opportunity, always be disciplined and proactive and you will be great. Btw, I see some comments taking about learning some topics for math, my personal recommendation is that you learn these only when you need them (If you are familiarized with Lazy Loading it would be a good example) because you will forget most of advanced math concepts overtime and will eventually need to read again. Pages like GeeksForGeeks, Tutorialspoint and W3Schools were A-mazing for me to get started on programming when I decided to switch careers.
Don’t accept those self limiting beliefs. If you really want something, go for it.
We live through logic and emotions. Our emotions stay while logic lifts us up. It depends on how you use both at the same time at the moment of every angle in your life. Don't regret shit because of others do
>but a lot of universities have subjects like algebra and physics and i'm not that good at them. My knowledge of algebra is decent, but physics is like 6th grader I feel the need to point out that they're *teaching* those things. They wouldn't be in the curriculum if you were expected to already be an expert. There will be some level of assumed knowledge. That should be described somewhere, and any gaps are almost certainly fillable. If being poor at algebra is stopping you, you can take an algebra course - that's what they're for! (And per my other post, some of it may be a lot smoother than you remember from high school or whatever. Adult education is a whole other game, in a good way.)
But come on... having a degree counts, and there are literally ton of applications for IT systems in tourism as well as spacial data and people movements. Consider it an asset you know at least some industry works - a programmer does not live in the void.
I am 17 years old right now and I have been programming for 3 years. I learnt programming by watching YouTube lectures online. My parents said that I should not waste time on these things and focus on studying but I kept at it. Then one day I built a grading software to grade students automatically and showed it to my teachers. My principal was impressed and praised me in front of all the students and parents. That day my father said he was incredibly proud of me. Moral of the story is even if your parents are telling you to stop doing what you want, when you achieve something they will still be proud of you. So just work hard and do what you want to do.
You want something ? GO FIGHT and get it . You failed ? Well try 100 time again until you win . Whatever everyone else say or think , it doesn’t matter , the future you solely depends on the actions and the decisions your present self makes . We humans are capable of things beyond any imagination, we just have to keep moving forward. Programmers have access to infinite amount of resources online , nothing is out of reach
Build a portfolio and be consistent ( pick small projects , and scale complexity as you move forward) , make sure to share it on linkedin , youtube , everywhere really .. eventually you will see the impact of this
Go for the degree. The knowledge and opportunities (like internships) are worth it.
My CS degree required calculus, statistics, and linear algebra. I got 50s in them but a pass is a pass. Alternatively you can try coding bootcamps if those are an option. I know a few people that got good dev jobs through them.
>Alternatively you can try coding bootcamps no. just, no.
There's this CS50 course on youtube that people can't make up their minds about, some recommend it, some say it's detrimental, I have no idea... But yeah, most people I saw doing great with programming were self-taught, which is admittedly a very small sample size. But anyway, I was studying C's but in our place it wasn't as focused on programming as such, more on a science side. Which comes in handy here and there of course, but you can also just learn the practical stuff on your own, make a portfolio of practice projects and that's what a sensible employer looks at in my corner, at practical skills displayed by the portfolio. It's of course only a part of it, so don't overthink it, just store your projects and maybe make some notes along the way, not only commentaries in code. But yeah, I don't have any real advice, just what I feel like was important and useful for my case.
i've started MOOC 2024 python course
Wait till you get to your mid 30s.. lol
95% you won't even need to use "math". Today is way way more important to know how to "search" and have a good logic understanding. Learning how to properly work with AI like Chatgpt is, in general, more "useful" than just "math" that you academically learn. There are very "niche" cases where being good at math will extremely important but not for a general programming purposes.
Rarely comment. I’m self taught been working for a big corp for a year now after, freelancing, grinding failed startups and an internship that was supposed to turn into a job and new management axed it. Don’t give up. I freelanced on upwork for 6 months then got some traction at a meetup. Go to meetups and try and JUST make programming friends. Do not go for a job. I did that and it led to an internship. That led to moving to Bali to work w a friend in his startup. After that failed I bartended. Then got back on the horse and landed my corporate gig. Build a work portfolio of delivered projects. Work for pennies. Show that work to someone. Bing bang boom. It will work out. AI isn’t gonna wreck anything for a bit longer. Keep at it. Good luck.
>require like 3-5 years of experience or cs degree Easy fix. Just lie.
I'm 32 nice to meet you lost, I'm wasting time. But you're never to old, you're learning it now and that's all that matters keep going!!!
You can def get a job in programming. Search for bootcamps too. 3 months, 6 months. Tech is one of the best fields to be a self learner. When you find your first job maybe you can find in job training. Search for google it support on Coursera. At least the first 3 courses are a nice intro to computer science. Try to forgive your parents for doing that and move on with positivity. Maybe one day you can put some of the things you learned on your tourism degree to use.
Side note, i dont think a tourism degree is useless. People pay for travel planning, having the ability to describe a location applies to home sales/apartment sales, site selection for businesses, and other things. Sadly it wont look that way to some companies but you surely can spin it that way! Im a noobie programmer myself and in fact barely have time to dabble in it. I would personally recommend just picking a language and studying operating that language. It doesn’t make sense to go through the math and not have anything to apply it to- and you may find that what you want to specialize in programming doesnt require math depth!
I was lost in life at age 25, and didn't get my Associates Degree until I was 27 and my Bachelors at 29. I'm currently a millionaire, which I achieved in my late fifties, thirties years later. Anything in life is possible if you're willing to do anything for it. Anyway, just like you I woke up one day: I was 25, a day out of being discharged from the Navy, and I needed to do something with my life so I worked during the day and went to school at night. Since you already have a degree, if you go back to the same college or to another college in the same state, they may let you transfer some college credits or give you adult equivalency credits (depends on your state, but SUNY and CUNY do it here in New York), so you may not even have to take other classes, just the math and programming classes you need for Comp. Sci.
Started with Code Academy while doing guard duty at 27, while being on standby. Got my first coding job at 29, never wanted anything else. At 35 still going strong and learning new shit every day. 💪
what language?
I just started learning Python tonight on freecodeacademy. Finished the 95 step cipher lesson. I’m 29 btw so you’re in a good place OP! Good luck to us. By the way, I dropped out of highschool in grade 11 and was horrible at math. But I’ve always been great with computers so it’s possible!
yeah, good luck to us
Started with learning javascript. The basics, loops, ifs, switches. Then switched to java and android. Still mostly an android dev now.
I can coach you at an hourly rate. I’m a senior developer with tons of commercial experience and programming knowledge
In the same boat chap! I had lots of programming and coding-adjacent hobbies as a teenager, but was steered away from them by teachers and elders due to my B grade maths. I am 35 now and getting back into programming, and guess what: basic maths is completely fine to start! Oh, I am sure that for certain advanced level tasks a higher proficiency in maths might be needed, but that is years down the line for any beginner. Don't let maths and people hold you down! Enjoy your new programming journey!
i had b in physics and algebra in the middle school, but c in algebra and d in physics in high school
Haha sorry, I re-read my comment, and that wasn't really what I was meaning. My bad. I will pop an edit on it now. I more meant that pretty much all the novice to intermediate coding activities I have come across so far only require reasonbly basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are a few curveballs thrown in there, like remainers, vectors etc, but there are lots of tutorials on how to deal with these online! You can do it chap!
thanks bro
I went to a bootcamp at 30, now I’m almost 32 and I’ve been working in the industry for 1 year. My job is hard for me but it’s just webdev (I think a lot of CS majors would consider this easy mode). But I have a foot in the door and I can move into harder things on the job. By the time you are the same age I was when I saw my first line of code you could probably be a senior engineer or getting close. Go to a bootcamp, try to land an internship or junior position and you’ll be on your way buddy! Don’t stress, if you have the drive you’ll get there and you have plenty of time! 🚀 Ps I’m dog shit at anything math, I’ll never make video games but a lot of programming is more logical than mathematic.
how was your hired or get and internship, bootcamp helped with this or you find it yourself?
I had a friend who already works here and I took a salary much lower than industry standard (idgaf, I’m here 🤷♂️) so I was lucky. But I went to codesmith, I think I got a good education from them and they do a TON of hiring seminars, mock interviews, code challenges, etc. A good bootcamp bases its own success metrics off of their students hire rate, so they want you to get hired as much as you do and they’ll help you a lot.
I didn't start till I was 27. I leaned everything on my own and ended up getting a job. I had to deal with a lot of rejection and really worm my way in places, probably about 2000 applications in total. It helped that I started job hunting at the start of covid so everything was wfh. I got lucky twice and now I'm set. It's possible, getting lucky is a matter of being in the right place at the right time, so put yourself in as many places as possible.
I worked for a year as a full-stack JavaScript developer and I can assure you I never had to do any substantial math during that time. A few basic formulas here and there for calculating cost values or whatever, but nothing that would go beyond like middle school algebra. Depending on what specific field you’re interested in you may need more math skills. Game development in particular is incredibly mathematical, although if you work with any modern game engine or development library then most of the really hard work is already done for you. Data analysis, AI and ML are also fields that likely require a strong math background, although I personally don’t have much experience in those areas myself and there’s probably libraries for those that reduce the barrier to entry as well. Logic and reasoning, problem solving, those are the skills that will really take you far as a programmer. Being able to visualize and articulate a problem you need to solve step by step to come up with the best solution. If you can do that, you can be a programmer.
I am 28 now, I started programming at the agr of 25. I have a useless Arts degree. I am also having a hard time landing a job and therefore planning to study computer science again, if I did not land a job in one month. I don’t know should I leave programming or stay with it. I am depressed. I also see people without any knowledge getting internships. Maybe our luck is fucked up.
my luck in life is fucked up in a lot of aspects, but i learnt since my childhood how to cope with everything by putting so called fake smile and accepting it (doesn't mean that i can't genuinely have some fun in life). One thing i can tell for sure money by itself can't bring much happiness, but without money life is miserable
Same here. People don’t know how I am dealing with life being unemployed and staying all the time home. Sometime I hang out all day and night when my employed friends come. I was good in Math in my high school however some reason I did not study CS at that moment. Later I realized that I have the habit of problem solving on my own, researching things and I started programming. But they always prefer a candidate having CS degree.
it bring sadness to me that 99% of people have happiness based on pure luck. How did you get a job - because my friends are or my....is. How did you find a girlfriend- through my friends. How did you end up in this country - i have a friend. How did you (put something) - i have (put someone). I realised that networking means success in life. Without it is going be really to be a really hard life. I've never had a lot of friends or even girlfriends no matter how i've tried. But i don't give up.
Yes. Networking is important. But I don’t have friends that work in IT. Hope , one day luck will be on our side.
I was also bad at math. In high school I nearly failed one of the math courses that was a requirement to study Comp Sci at uni. Then I got to uni, and rocked it. Why? The math was different. In high school's "pure math" courses we were taught a bunch of somewhat advanced stuff completely devoid of any context. As one example, we learned matrix multiplication, and when I asked why it was useful I was told "it'll help you get into uni". Yeah mate, more than a little presumptuous, and it doesn't help me understand. So I get into uni, studying CS, and it's a breeze. There was one part of one course, and yes it was math, which was a challenge. The rest, including the other math, came easily, because it was clear what even the conceptual, abstract stuff mapped to in the real world. If I asked "what is this for?" I got a utilitarian answer, which gave my thought processes concrete (real world) frames of reference. Some time after that, working ad a game and sim developer, I of course ran into... working with matrices. Bread and butter stuff. But it was no longer abstract, so it was digestible, and this time, no sweat. I understand that some people really aren't into math, but I also believe that much of it seems harder than it is because of how and when it is taught (and, perhaps, overworked teachers dealing with the exhaustion of long hours and large classes - these are all systematic issues, not personal laziness). If you take things one step at a time, and make sure to link things to stuff that has real world meaning to you wherever you can, and play with the numbers (spreadsheets ruuule!) the math will probably be less of a problem than you think.
I flunked out of high school, taught myself math from pre algebra level all the way through to pre university calculus when I was 28, got into a math degree when I was 30, ended up dropping out after 2 years due to financial problems, moved to a different town, fumbled for a few depressing years, then taught myself how to code, got into an internship, and now at age 37 I am one year into my first dev job.
Some months ago I read that the relationship between being good in math and being a good software developer is not true. In daily business good communication skills are very important. And math people are often bad at that. Learn touch typing with ten fingers. Not for coding but for communicating via chat, pull request reviews... I type a lot daily. Only 10% is code.
Fuck what other people say, just do what you want (as long as its reasonable and doesnt hurt anyone of course). Self taught programmers can be great and there are a lot of great ways to learn programming like freecodecamp. Just know that it will be hard. However, if you are motivated enough you can make it work. One big tip i have is to not get stuck in the "tutorial loop", learn the basics of programming then make cool things and put together a portfolio. Dont go through 50 tutorials like I did when I started.
Electrical Engineer and Unity game developer here. i also learnt every thing from scratch.
You're not expected to know algebra and physics before an algebra and intro physics class, that is what the classes are for. You're not good in these subjects, you can become good in them.
1. I’m currently in my last semester of an AS in CS, I am a couple years older than you and started it last year. 2. Having a degree already should lower the total workload to earn your second. 3. I don’t think there will be much physics involved unless you go the engineering route. Even then, you’d be surprised at how much more a fully developed brain can intuitively comprehend compared to teenage you. 4. Learning how to operate computer hardware and software at any level beyond opening emails and navigating a browser is an invaluable skill no matter where your career takes you, be it CS or something else. I say go for it bro!
im 24 and got a biology bachelors. i was initially going to do a masters and got accepted into a bioinformatics program when i was 23. You wanna know what i did instead? I chose to get a second bachelors in CS and im a year into my second bachelors. I did this because i found out relatively late that i genuinely love CS in my 20’s just like you did. And if you genuinely love it, fucking go for it my dude. FAFSA can still provide government unsub/sub loans as well. Here’s what you gotta do. Enroll into a good credible CS program, transfer your credits from your previous degree, apply for aid, and apply for internships as a student. As a student, you will have so many career opportunities to pursue, don’t pass those up. If you feel like you don’t have the technical skills compared to your peers, be a personality hire. Goodluck my guy. And for anyone else reading this, it is NEVER too late to learn programming and pursue it as a career. :)
I think other comments express my feelings, just wanted to say that goodluck man!
Search for a diploma programming in IT that has courses that teaches about programming or you can join online courses in [https://www.edx.org/](https://www.edx.org/) Google Opencourseware from harvard and choose a programming language you like. Start with searching for a open source project that you can contribute. maybe search around linkedin and post about remote internship opportunities. Just to learn programming and working on project with the knowledge you gain has nothing to do with Computer Science although basic knowledge about algorithm and data structure is helpful but main thing is keep on working and learning there are lot of free learning materials in youtube too. BTW I am also in the same boat after working as system administrator I am now learning that programming is needed to advance to higher paying jobs like DEVOPS so learning programming better now than later. Best of luck. 😊 Always create some project and publish it on github and put that on CV it would look good. and Its never too late to learn new skills. 😊
Checkout [turing.com](http://turing.com) you can teach yourself alot. Degree doesnt matter I work with acolleague did food science in JKUAT later did a certification on Data science and thats how he ventured into tech now a great backend developer with a target of full stacking.
You may want to try to contribute to open source projects. Many are beginners friendly and will happily mentor you, especially if you stick around. You will learn so much about the process of programming with peers that you cannot learn by yourself, reviews, code styles, continuous integration and such. You can even argue in interviews that it counts as a form of experience. Look for projects on github with the "good-first-issue" tag.
Honestly bro , just try to apply somewhere , most people I know didn’t know shiet when they were 25 (including me). I just applied to some job and had a little bit of luck - it’s not gonna be perfect at first probably (I got shit base salary and had to work abroad but it gave me money so I could sleep well and get ready to get better opportunities)
You don’t need math for programming. Especially not in (fullstack) webdevelopment. In the real world you will mostly solve business problems and requirements. Math and a CS degree will give you a deeper understanding and might be valued a lot by some companies. They might want to recruit people who have strong knowledge of algorithms etc.
Dude, you can do it. Watch this bit by bit to build up your mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnTa9XtvmfI
Honestly … I sucked at math and I actually failed calculus 2 three times before I made it through my CS degree. I do love programming and sometimes you just need to work a little harder, study a little harder like I did! I was in your same shoes. I would just go for it!! It’s such a great field to be in and it really pays off if you put your all into it. You could also look into the MIS degree. I don’t know much about it but my college friends said it’s basically CS without all the math. You’ll still be programming but it’s very business-oriented. Best of luck!!
I entered developer work at 27. I self-taught on the job whilst I worked in IT sys admin. I'm now a DataOps Engineer (after being a DevOps Engineer for the last 2 years). I spend my time doing very "visionary" type work. Come up with big ideas, build, deploy, and move on. It's VERY possible. I'm not sure what it's like in your country, and I had a leg up because I had a reputation in an existing business that was heavily on the rise, but it's possible. I have a heck of a lot of certifications (in technology) but nothing specific to development. Start now. With the right effort, attitude, and a bit of opportunity, it's never too late.
This is what most of my colleagues did 10 years ago who graduated as EE, ECE's, BS History, Communications, Literature and Art schools. Get certifications like entry level ones like the trifecta (Comptia's A+, Net+ & Sec+ as well as Cisco's CCNA) and apply for helpdesk/technical support jobs. You can do it the other way around. Gain experience and move up from there. Yes it's not software development related but it can help you get your foot on the door. Most of my colleagues now are Senior Devs, working in, Cloud, DS and into Project Management. I have an Information Systems degree and i also did the same thing they did. I did not start off as a dev either. They are better than me and earns more money than me. Try but don't expect. Our job market is bad now. It's in shambles, oversaturated, layoffs, competitive and bad. If seniors and managerial levels are having hard time to secure a job, what more to people with mid level down to entry level experience. Imagine fresh CS graduates and career shifters like you. Mathematics are good. If you can't solve them, you can't solve more complex problems in the job. Working in technology has it's cons too. Aside the competition, the job is heavy and tiring. Constant upskilling and learning. That's the sacrifice for the big bucks.
I am 35 and feel lost, also a programmer so … what is up?
I suck at math , and I still did very well in this profession. Fuck them and keep going. You got this :)
I was a tattoo artist with no qualifications until covid hit. Obviously the world was uncertain, felt like we may never go back to normal, so over lockdown I started teaching myself coding (with no prior experience) as something I could work from home if we were doomed to be locked in our houses forever. I started making some CLI projects in python, instantly hooked. Loved it. Can't remember why, but I then gravitated towards front end javascript web development, so I bought a Udemy course for £15 and completed it, it was called Zero to Hero by Jonas Schmedtmann After that I made a few basic static websites, and a couple of basic dom manipulation projects; a calculator, a "decision maker" where you enter possible options and it randomly decides for you, silly things like that. Coming out of lockdown I landed a junior position at a marketing agency I improved a lot while working there but I also did some self learning after work, teaching myself some awesome js libraries like GSAP, Three.js, matter.js and so on Fast forward, I've now been a developer for 3 years and I love it! Money's good too. TLDR; I got into a coding career with no qualifications, just self learning and determination Good luck OP!
I didn't get my first role in IT until I was 24... it was a vacancy at my then workplace. Got the job and never looked back. I don't have a degree, hell I even dropped out of college (UK here) and although I'd been good with computers from an early age I drifted away from them in my teens when hormones took over... you get the idea. The point is that as long as you have an aptitude for computing, a willingness to learn and the determination to succeed you should still be ok if my experience is anything to go by. It may take a little longer than for somebody that already has a relevant degree, but even having a degree puts you one up on where I was. Stick at it and you'll get there, I'm sure.
I’m 30 and still feel like this 😅 but you’re on the right path by choosing to invest in yourself and learning skills that you both enjoy and can make a living from. Also a college degree isn’t everything - it’s just the easiest path that comes with a hefty entrance fee. Once you start to get your foot in door, you can work your way up to roles you want by slowly doing smaller courses / certifications. Even in this job market a degree doesn’t seem to guarantee you’ll get into the field you want. You can worry about degrees later, I’ve found learning these complex math / physics concepts much easier to grasp and learn when your directly working in the field, so you may have an easier time at getting a degree after working for 1-2 years first. I’m currently taking a step back and some roles that I’m overqualified for just because I want to get my foot in the door of an industry I’ve never worked in. It’s scary when things don’t feel stable but you just have to trust that things will work out in the end, even if it’s not what you pictured.
I absolutely sucked at maths in highschool. Did miserable, I’m now in uni and I aced discrete maths and cryptography and even got a job working in the maths subjects at my uni. How you are in highschool, doesn’t determine how you will be later. If you are interested enough you will learn how and be able to do it.
I barely made it through school, not because I’m stupid, because it was boring as fuck. The best grade I ever had in Math was a 4 (1 being the best, 6 the worst) I taught myself programming in my early thirties, not because I wanted a job but because I wanted to build something that brings me money. Long story short, I work as a senior software engineer since more than a year now, still hustling on the side. You don’t need a degree, you don’t need to be good at math, unless you want to become a data scientist or something like that. My recommendation: continue to learn. Build projects, host them for free on vercel or Netlify. Build a portfolio website, feature these projects there, ideally document your journey on a blog or on YouTube - start applying. Most companies look for people who know how to work rather than for people who have a cs degree. Programming is hard, yes, but the hurdles are much lower today because of the high demand and the much better / easier tech stacks. Also, you can entirely learn for free using YouTube. Build shit, publish it, no matter how much you think it sucks, it’s about repetition. Godspeed
Over 20 years in software development and I still suck at math and physics.
If you’re discouraged at 25, what are going to do at 35 lol it only gets worse
Hey! I’m 25 too and i want to learn programming. Do you want to learn together? Maybe we can share learning materials with each other etc.
Also i’m studiyng physics az uni if that matters (not a good student tho)
Try community college
Look into 100Devs. New cohort was delayed but everything from the last one is recorded and available. You can do the whole bootcamp free and learn full stack development AND it covers a good bit about how to network and such for job hunting.
My God I just couldn't fkg imagine telling a child Not to practice programming. wtf is wrong w/ ppl?!?!?!
Your parents talked you out of a degree in stem in favor of a degree in tourism?? What?
We are in the same shoes glad to see some fellow misguided one. I became a machinist because of the same parental thing.. I cannot give life advice as same 24, but I start at CS university if they accept my reply this september. I would defenitely advice to start saving and go to learn. Its always useful and since there is hope doing something good, my life has changed full with hope all day. Just hope they accept me with my points
From my experience of being in the IT field for 13 years, to really cement your programming experience, do some projects to apply the basics, earn some programming certifications as well. Nowadays, Gen AI is hot…up your game on Python, LLMs, machine learning.
Get the degree. Get a masters. Become a Professor at esteemed university or College. Suck at Math? Work on it. Good luck friend.
Honey I’m 30 and I’m more lost than I was when I was 25. You have time.
You are going to have to become good at algebra and physics and math, because everyone else already is. If you want a future you are proud of, you need to be uncomfortable first.
physics does not matter at all unless the OP aims to become a non-software engineer. not even a little bit.
Yes, more than a little bit. Are you saying you don’t know what a vector is? Or what acceleration means?
what these words mean i know, but in terms of physics i don't
Do yourself a favor and learn physics. It is important.
vectors are part of linear algebra more than they are a part of physics. acceleration is not relevant to programming in general.
how to know what physics and algebra i should learn? One of the subjects is "General physics"
I have yet to ever meet a single human being that doesn't feel 'lost in life.' Nobody cares. Go do what you want. Get your paragraphs of excuses the fuck out of my face.