How to return to coders when over forty

How many times told colleagues and interviews. Apparently there is a demand for Habré. Someone got a choice. Another doubts the correctness of the intended path. When you burn out, it happens. Someone wonders what to face ahead, or compare their like. Believe me, this is a short version of the volume dreary history.

Self-identification Bourne

To be called a programmer is too loud. I am a coder, or bylokloder, or govnoder, if quite frankly. Regularly poking around in a shitty code, raking and pile on top. Need for speed, cheaper, more. Well, you know how it is. Even in grocery companies require LET'S JUST WORK. Learned to enjoy the process, the result is not always happy. Home projects help.

It doesn't matter at what age it dawned on becoming a programmer. In the 90s I went to be quite a successful sales manager, and practiced my pleasure in the evenings for almost five years. I was twenty-seven when I received a certificate - six hundred dollars for three months of hard work. How did I then exult! This is my craft, my business, this is mine now.

The first passion - Delphi, permanently stuck in PHP. Did you strive for beauty? Of course. I tried: C #, Java, Python. And then the need to work for the sake of wanting money was gone. Suddenly there was a fire in Moscow, and I escaped from smog to Bobruisk, and remained indefinitely. Moscow sucks vital juices like no other city. I decided to pursue "retirement" in advance, in case you have to go to the forefathers ahead of time. A third of the time was taken up by the support of old projects, another third by the study of promising technologies, and the rest was spent on traveling in Europe. I fell in love with CoffeeScript on Meteor, then Clojure, and now JS (ES6 + Node + React + Redux).

Is it difficult to get a job without a diploma

Once I brought a suitcase of books for an interview to demonstrate my knowledge. Hmm. Recently I learned that even in America 12 years of experience equate to a diploma. In Europe, less. It is impossible to fill out questionnaires on websites, looking for direct contacts with employers, contact directly. And then it happens in different ways.

Perseverance and methodical, and everything will turn out. When you need answers in the “guess the melody” style, I usually feel like a nonentity, but I don’t refuse to play. I look at the test tasks with amazement, there seems to be enough free code samples.

The road to the big bosses is closed, but here the ambitions have long been exhausted. With rare exceptions, I shine in the team - he is so alone, I look with a grin at the complexes on this issue (and what remains for me, a disabled person).

How to "return to the big sport"

This is like a workout. If you stop practicing every day, you lose your skills. There is a beautiful word in Belarusian - peramoga. It is best suited to define the struggle with old habits and patterns of thinking. It is hard to acquire new knowledge, age-related changes in the assimilation of information obviously play their part. I use more available techniques: write a pen in a notebook under the heading “what I learned new”, publish profile articles , spend sparring with trainees (when you explain, understand better yourself), and of course YouTube has opened a new world of self-education. Oh yeah, to work, like on holiday! Living projects are an invaluable practice. And the help of colleagues. True, sometimes you feel like a crazy grandfather, who is giving way to a place in transport.

What's next

Now I live in Minsk. Rent a room in a cottage. Neighbors-alcoholics, so that life does not seem raspberries. Warm garage in the basement. Storage room for accumulated belongings. Bathhouse Plot with apple-pears. He put an old caravan on eternal parking - in the summer instead of giving, comfort at the right level: condo, fridge, satellite, Wi-Fi. I have not yet written my best code, but I have prepared all the conditions. May is coming soon.