I am a nurse.
I am 38 years old.
And I have not started coding yet.
But I have always wanted to.
That want has followed me quietly for years. It shows up when I hear people talk about building things from nothing, when I see software solving real problems, and when I wonder what is actually happening behind the screens I use every day.
I never acted on it. Not once.
Why I Never Started
It is easy to tell yourself stories that sound reasonable.
I told myself I was too busy.
I told myself I picked the safe path already.
I told myself coding was for people who started young.
None of those were completely true.
The real reason was simpler and harder to admit. I did not want to be a beginner again.
In nursing, experience matters. Confidence matters. People trust you. In coding, I would have none of that. I would be slow, confused, and constantly Googling things everyone else seemed to already know.
That discomfort kept me frozen.
The Age Question I Kept Asking
Am I too old to start now?
I assumed age was the problem, without really testing that assumption. But the truth is, nothing about my daily work suggests my brain stopped working at 38.
As a nurse, I:
- Learn new protocols all the time
- Work with complex systems and technology
- Make decisions under pressure
- Adapt quickly when things change
Learning syntax and logic is not harder than that. It is just unfamiliar.
The fear was not about ability. It was about identity.
Wanting Without Acting
There is a strange place between wanting something and doing it.
I lived there for years.
Wanting felt safe. Starting felt risky.
Once you start, the fantasy breaks. You find out if you are patient enough, consistent enough, or stubborn enough to keep going. As long as I never started, the idea of coding stayed perfect and untouched.
That is comfortable. And also limiting.
What I Realized Late
Coding is not a single door you walk through and never come back from.
Starting does not mean quitting nursing.
Learning does not mean committing to a new identity.
It just means allowing curiosity to exist in action, not only in thought.
I do not need to become a software engineer tomorrow. I do not even need a plan yet. I just need to stop treating interest like a promise I am afraid to break.
Where I Am Now
I am still a nurse.
I am still 38.
And I still have not started coding.
But now I am being honest about why.
Not starting is not neutral. It is a decision. And once I saw that clearly, the question changed.
It stopped being “Is it too late?”
And became “How much longer am I willing to wait?”
Final Thought
I do not know yet if I will actually do this.
I do not know if I will open a tutorial, write my first line of code, or close the tab and come back to this thought again months from now. That uncertainty is still here, and I am not pretending otherwise.
But I do know this. The wanting has not gone away. It has been quiet, patient, and persistent.
Maybe that means something. Or maybe it does not.
For now, I am just sitting with the question instead of answering it too quickly.
And that feels like progress, even if I am not sure where it leads.
Top comments (13)
A very heartwarming post, since been there and done that myself!
Its never too late, as they say the best time was yesterday the second best is now.
Also, here are some tips when I first started out, hopefully helpful!
And best of luck, trust me it gets easier once you set a goal and dedicate yourself to it!
The magic of coding for me is pulling something out of the ether. The most important thing is usually to have an idea that you really want to make real and then fight your way through it. I've just been talking to a colleague who works in our operations team. They are not really a coder, but they've used AI to build an app that they really wanted to make to do with optimising performance for games. The act of making this thing has taught them more about coding and systems than I think a lot of tutorials would have done, and now they've really got the bug. You definitely can do it, but it's a long journey. It's a frustrating journey. Even after doing this job for more than 40 years, you still can't believe what it is you don't know.
I was talking to a much younger person who wanted to learn to code. I asked them if their math was strong, and they said it wasnt. Well, it used to be that most programming was done by people with math/physics backgrounds. Sometime later, kids with no college degrees could get into coding, and make a professional career even. Unfortunately, things have progressed to the point that most such coding can be done by chatGPT. So, dont learn coding, ask chatGPT to code for you (whatever it is you wanted to code), but you must learn to read it back and build on it by using the same syntax to do more things. What is it that you wanted to try to code? Maybe it is some smartphone app to track some tasks in your nursing job? You could and should start right away.
I believe that a passion for nursing reflects certain aspects of your personality, which could play a role in your success as a coder.
Successful coders:
I have taught many coders over many years, and this was my experience.
Arnold
codecollege.co.za
💯✨💪
YOU CAN DO IT! What is rare is this level of self-awareness. Beginners who succeed aren’t the youngest, they’re the ones comfortable being uncomfortable and consistent while learning in public.
BEST LUCK!
You can do it!
To everyone that is reading this and is new, my suggestion: start with things that will make you say WOW, for example, create a small app with HTML and Javascript (no frameworks), where with Javascript you will draw things on a canvas (HTML element).
That image can be your smartphone background.
Now, try to draw random things in random places.
Now with random colors.
Now things based on cool math formulas.
Now..... etc etc.
The WOW factor will keep you motivated to learn more and more.
Don't go to the terminal or learn a framework.
Use AI, but make sure you ask it to explain to you why and how things work that way.
Don't think that you will earn a lot of money, think how cool it is to create new things from nothing.
Keep pushing.
It is never too late, nowadays with AI you don't need to learn how to code, you need to learn to basics and concepts of digital product development
Never too late.
Especially true for web applications, before coding comes a basic understanding of how the web works. What are HTTP and HTML? What does a browser really do? Why do we have cookies? This is an exciting journey worth going through without writing a single line of code.
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