newbie but 32 years old

[jarby dacillo]

I'm 32 years of age, zero knowledge in web development, am I still qualified to change career? I'm now studying on my own in html

[Mugurel Chirica]

This depends on you, if you are motivated and willing to work really hard to learn everything you need then I would say that you have a high change.

You have two options:

1. Don't quit your day job and work all your free time to learn HTML/CSS and then whatever path you want, in a few weeks/months you will know if this is something you will be good at or not.

Keep in mind that in this field you will have to learn new things for the rest of your life if you want to promote or sometimes even keep your job.

2. If you have some money set aside and you want to go all in, go all in. Spend every time you can (at least 40 hours per week) on learning and in a few months of work if you manage to understand the basics you will be able to find a Junior web developer job or start doing freelancing looking for opportunities.

My recommendation is to start with: https://www.codecademy.com/, do all their HTML/CSS courses, then move to https://www.freecodecamp.com/challenges/claim-your-front-end-development-certificate.

Then depending on your learning style watch as many video courses or read as many books as you can.

Once you have a basic understanding (you are able to create websites from designs, PSD to HTML/CSS) you can move up to the next level.

If you want to have a better foundation for your knowledge but will be a lot more difficult to get started learn Ruby for a few weeks then move to Ruby on Rails (framework).

If you want an easier path but your understanding of things might be

If you only want to get by you could just learn HTML/CSS and some bits of Javascript and do small website projects (there is still a market for that, but the prices are low because it's a low entry point).

If you want to earn more and promote etc, you will have to learn to create and maintain complex web apps which is a lot of work and takes ears to get to a mid-senior level.

An IT career today might be hard (depending on what you want to do), but the rewards in therms of motivation and money are very good.

[Greg Navis]

Let's turn this around: why do you think you wouldn't qualify for a career change? This may help us give you the right perspective on your concerns.

[Karthikeyan A K]

Rails is great. I love it so much I just can't describe it in words. Its earned my food for a long time. For me it took 11 months in total to master Ruby + Rails. I owe a lot to all humans who made this thing possible.

I came from PHP background so I felt Rails was crazy at first, then when I understood it, it was heaven, literally. My students now who learn Rails from scratch don't feel its crazy, they feel its very natural, so you will be good with it I hope. I have even written book for beginners Ruby and you can get it here https://mindaslab.github.io/I-Love-Ruby/

It will be great if you can share your learning experience with the community. And please don't go for paid courses, they literally suck (not better than free ones).

On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 12:44 PM, jarby dacillo <jarbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm 32 years of age, zero knowledge in web development, am I still qualified to change career? I'm now studying on my own in html

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[Hassan Schroeder]

On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 12:14 AM, jarby dacillo <jarbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm 32 years of age, zero knowledge in web development, am I still qualified
> to change career? I'm now studying on my own in html

Everyone starts *everything* with "zero knowledge".

As Mugurel Chirica said:
"Keep in mind that in this field you will have to learn new things for

the rest of your life" <- THIS

If you enjoy continuous learning, go for it - your age is irrelevant.
Most of the people who created the WWW were older than you are
now. When I built my first web site in 1993 I was in my mid-40s and
believe me we were all making it up as we went along 😀

Also: consider your personal learning style. There are plenty of free
resources online, but there are also a lot of junior devs working in
San Francisco who went the "code camp" route to ramp up quickly.

Whatever your path, best of luck!
--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.s...@gmail.com
twitter: @hassan
Consulting Availability : Silicon Valley or remote

[Joe Guerra]

It's very hard to find the time if you have a full-time job. 

1. if your committed, I would quit your job.  It takes a good 40 to 60 hrs a week to fully grasp and remember stuff.  

2. find a good bootcamp, I think in class training is more structured than online training, but it will cost you quite a bit of coin.

[Joe Guerra]

The other thing is get a github account right away and start making regular contributions.  Nice thing about github, it shows you how much work you've put into it.

Finally, start applying even if you don't have the experience on small jobs online using freelance sites. 

On Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 3:28:13 AM UTC-4, jarby dacillo wrote: