No. Everyone I've met who learned how to program after e.g. age 40, they had a hard time.
There's a certain mental agility which comes with youth which makes for good coders. I haven't met anyone who learned to program late who had the same. Over time, it gets replaced with depth, maturity, and experience, so people who start in tech do okay older. However, people who come in late have neither of those. Everyone I've seen try to make the hop late-career felt clumsy at programming, and at the same time, inexperienced.
It wasn't a failure due to age discrimination, although goodness knows that exists too. It was a failure due to simply not being able to become any good.
This isn't to say it's not worth doing, especially for people with a different prior skill set. An experienced teacher who learns just a little bit of programming can become awesome at ed-tech. An experienced biologist who learns a little bit of biology can do product work or manage a team of programmers for a biotech. Virtually any discipline with a little bit of programming becomes an awesome combo.
There's a certain mental agility which comes with youth which makes for good coders. I haven't met anyone who learned to program late who had the same. Over time, it gets replaced with depth, maturity, and experience, so people who start in tech do okay older. However, people who come in late have neither of those. Everyone I've seen try to make the hop late-career felt clumsy at programming, and at the same time, inexperienced.
It wasn't a failure due to age discrimination, although goodness knows that exists too. It was a failure due to simply not being able to become any good.
This isn't to say it's not worth doing, especially for people with a different prior skill set. An experienced teacher who learns just a little bit of programming can become awesome at ed-tech. An experienced biologist who learns a little bit of biology can do product work or manage a team of programmers for a biotech. Virtually any discipline with a little bit of programming becomes an awesome combo.