Does Is Hard To Start Coding At Age 32 I Want Learn Python?

[Pawelk198604]

I've always been interested in computers. I recently spent about PLN 400 on the e-learning platform udemy.com for Python program classes 

I remember like on time 17 years old boy and my neighbor knocked my door, and said that they Windows XP operating system get infection, help your neighbor, So they recreated a scene from my favorite American film, The Godfather if they ware Godfather why not GodIT guy :-) 
I told them you come too me at 18:00 (6 PM) after i go back from my college, and want play Assassin Creed 2, and want me to fix you WInXP? I Good how i love that movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i96VS_z8y7g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PXC7tOmRds

So i come and check comp and learned what was cause of virus infection it was a PORN VIRUS
[snip]

They just disengaged family filter on PC, but sadly IT security suits are interconnected disengaging parental control module disengage AV and Firewall module as well xD 
They wanted to remove that virus because they parents whom i knew could ground them in house for month without PC, they would pay me any amount of money if i remove that Trojan i said they nod need pay my anything just not did this again xD
[snip]

I log on to Windows, I see a lot of pop-up windows like on this video 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfwoexD21cA
 I told this modern youth, no respect for IT security :-) 
That in my time the end of the 90's, such websites were seen in the school computer lab, how to get a small loss because they were bought for money from the ministry of national education, that is, from budget money
 I rapiered their PC using just windows restore, but booth boys get panic attack
 As young kid i loved our polish movie called Hacker, actually we had two movie about that people once i wanted to be a Hacker but good one that keep for IT Security 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzNa3j2WzfI

[snip]

Edited October 23, 2018 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Nuke]

dont see any reason why you couldnt. my brain didnt stop working until at least 35 and thats plenty of time to learn programming.

python is pretty much the new java right now. i hear its very popular in the scientific community, so worth going into if thats something you are interested in. python is kind of at the top of my languages to learn list. but i often find myself using other languages that i already know. i started with c when i was 15 though. 

Edited March 21, 2018 by Nuke

[razark]

The hard part about learning to program is learning to break down what you want the computer to do into a series of steps.  Once you learn to do that, it's just a matter of figuring out how to tell the computer to do it in whatever language you choose to use.

 

Python's pretty easy in that regard. 

Spoiler

 

[HebaruSan]

Coding is easy, debugging is hard.

[Kerbart]

Find a project you want to code. Maybe it’s orbital calculations. Organizing mods. Scraping the web for ksp information. Learning to code is easier if you have a goal to code towards to.

It took me about 6 months to learn 1/5 of what I know about Pandas. And 2 weeks to learn the remaining 80% in a project where I had to process survey data.

[Majorjim!]

The idea that young brains are better at learning is a myth. You are now equally able to learn as you where in school. Go for it dude!

[wumpus]

20 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Coding is easy, debugging is hard.

A great reason to learn python, although it isn't without its warts (that first bug that's due to everything in python being a reference can be painful).  But in general it should be easier to debug than Java (Perl is said to be write-only.  If you have to fix a bug you find later, better to rewrite the code than to debug it).

Python is taking over the numerical calculation world, but I'm not sure it is all that popular (for employers) anywhere else (and I'm clueless about what Polish employers want).  That said, it should be roughly as suitable for any task you need (python 2.x finally overthrew BASIC [don't learn BASIC, it will damage your brain for later] as the best string-manipulation language (at least for pure ASCII strings), I'm not sure if python 3 (which uses unicode natively) is *quite* as slick).  One thing that I've found python lacking in is GUI programming integration: I'd look into IronPython and the .NET/mono environment.  It might work better).

[Snark]

Certainly brains get a bit "stiffer" as they age-- I can tell that it's considerably more of an effort for me to pick up new (human) languages now than it was a few decades ago, for example.  But it's not a question of "can" or "can't" learn, it's a question of how fast and with how much effort.

In any case... 32?  That's not "old", dude.  There's absolutely no reason you can't learn to code, if you want to.   Go for it! 

[Gargamel]

12 hours ago, Snark said:

(human)

Yes, brains do get stiffer with age.... It took me a moment.  At first I could not think of any other type of language.... then I remembered what thread I was in. 

Sigh....

I'm not a coder by any means, but I do enjoy schmutzing around with simple non gui programs and arduino's.   But the key to programming, for me at least, is not knowing the language, but knowing where to look up the answer.  Eventually you will learn the things you do repeatedly, but the key is finding new stuff to learn.    I haven't done any arduino stuff in a year or so, and I was looking at a bit of code I wrote for a lamp, 1000+ lines of code, and I'm trying to figure how I did what I did.  Not for a lack of comments, but for a lack of knowledge.   So to get good at it, you have to practice.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, Gargamel said:

But the key to programming, for me at least, is not knowing the language, but knowing where to look up the answer.

Well, I'd agree with you, in the case where a person is already somewhat familiar with programming.

However... if someone's completely new to the concept of programming itself... the real key that has to happen before that is being able to break down a problem into a sequence of minimal, logical, completely pin-headed deterministic steps. 

That's a thing that doesn't come naturally to everyone.  Computers are spectacularly dumber than people, in many important ways, and for someone who's never coded at all before, I've noticed that they can struggle with trying to "think down" to the computer's level.

Let's say you want a function that looks at an array of values and returns whether a particular target value is present in the array or not.

• To a human, it's simple:  you show them a list of numbers, and they just point at the list and say "there it is!"
• But for a computer program, you have to iterate, and start at the first value, and check whether it matches or not, and then iterate one by one to the next and the next and the next.

It's not rocket science, and (if you have any background coding anything at all ever, or if you simply happen to be of a mathematical bent of mind), it may seem pretty obvious to you that "of course that's how you'd code it."  But I've met plenty of people-- including smart ones-- who really seemed to struggle to get past their natural "just see it and point my finger and say 'there it is!'" reaction, because they find it difficult to mentally put themselves in the computer's shoes, so to speak.  "Thinking as dumb as a computer" seems to go against their grain, somehow.

So, depending on how much the OP does or doesn't know about programming, and/or how his natural thought processes tend to work, that may be the biggest initial challenge.  It comes more easily to some than to others, and it has little to do with how "smart" one is, in my experience.  I think everyone can do it, but it's more of an effort for some than for others.  It's just a question of the level of motivation to leap that gap.

[LordFerret]

Brains may 'stiffen', but you never stop learning, ever. The day you do stop learning is the day you're dead.

Go for it.

 

...and the word you guys seem to be searching for here, but can't seem to find, is.....

'aptitude'.