Oh this warms my heart! I've been seeking out a lot of stories from people who are getting into coding "later" in life (meaning not right out of college), so it's great to know there are several of us out there!
How did you get into things? Were you self-taught?
👋 Hey there, I am Waylon Walker
I am a Husband, Father of two beautiful children, Senior Python Developer currently working in the Data Engineering platform space. I am a continuous learner, and sha
I went to college for Mechanical Engineering. Programming was a small part of a class or two but far from the focus. An overgeneralization of Mechanical Engineers is that most of them are allergic to code and want to stay as far away from it as possible. Not I, I was addicted and self-taught Matlab enough to do all of my assignments with that rather than excel. After college, I became a mechanical engineer where the high price of a Matlab license deterred me into using the usual Microsoft suite of tools like my colleagues. About 3 years in I really saw a strain in my workflow. Days lost from excel crashes, spreadsheets getting too big. Access queries ran slow. A colleague of mine at the time recommended python. He had never used it, but heard it was better than what I was doing. I don't think he knew the can of worms he opened. I spent the next couple of years diving head first into python hardcore until I left ME to become a full time Data Scientist at 28. While I do have a degree in a technical field it was far from programming. I made the switch about 5 years after college.
That’s so awesome! Sounds like an interesting journey, for sure.
I’m coming from the humanities, which is a bit farther afield than ME, but it is definitely encouraging to hear that others have made the career transition without a CS degree.
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Oh this warms my heart! I've been seeking out a lot of stories from people who are getting into coding "later" in life (meaning not right out of college), so it's great to know there are several of us out there!
How did you get into things? Were you self-taught?
Is 39 later enough? ;)
MORE THEN ENOUGH!! 😁
I went to college for Mechanical Engineering. Programming was a small part of a class or two but far from the focus. An overgeneralization of Mechanical Engineers is that most of them are allergic to code and want to stay as far away from it as possible. Not I, I was addicted and self-taught Matlab enough to do all of my assignments with that rather than excel. After college, I became a mechanical engineer where the high price of a Matlab license deterred me into using the usual Microsoft suite of tools like my colleagues. About 3 years in I really saw a strain in my workflow. Days lost from excel crashes, spreadsheets getting too big. Access queries ran slow. A colleague of mine at the time recommended python. He had never used it, but heard it was better than what I was doing. I don't think he knew the can of worms he opened. I spent the next couple of years diving head first into python hardcore until I left ME to become a full time Data Scientist at 28. While I do have a degree in a technical field it was far from programming. I made the switch about 5 years after college.
That’s so awesome! Sounds like an interesting journey, for sure.
I’m coming from the humanities, which is a bit farther afield than ME, but it is definitely encouraging to hear that others have made the career transition without a CS degree.