Ask HN: 44-year old software developer – what now?
Data points: 1) current job is for a logistics company where over 5 years, along with a non-developer co-worker as advisor, I've created a custom Winforms / SQL server application that now runs the company.
2) have Australian and EU citizenship, currently in the EU
3) technically am 'ok', sometimes slightly better than that; my strengths lie is talking to non-technical people and creating cleanly-developed and maintainable software that meets their requirements
4) have a joint venture agreement in place with an Australian-based long-running client (since 2005); I rewrote his Delphi-based finance application in C# so it now works cross-platform on Windows and Mac (using Xamarin), with a shared PCL (portable class library) that contains the core calculations. There is an 'ok' mostly-passive (aside from bug fixes) income from the sale of this product.
5) my work, with the exception of some C# Mac work in recent years, has been entirely Windows-based, and 90% of this has been Winforms. Early on I worked on and helped develop a C++/Paradox (!!) application, then Delphi apps, and now C#/.NET/Winforms is basically everything.
6) via HN I have a reasonable understanding of current technologies, but zero practical experience, although I do have some 'as required' experience with HTML / CSS / JS
7) I've got Crohn's disease, and can't practically make it into an office job 5 days a week, or reliably
8) currently am learning Python and Django
I still love developing, and although I'm an introvert like solving people's business or general problems with software, and interacting with them to achieve this.
Any brainstorming ideas would be appreciated.
13 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 47.3 ms ] threadWhat kind of work do you really want to do?
What would be an ideal mix of workplace elements relating to your health and working with colleagues and where you would live?
How much do you want to stretch? Python and Django are in a way similar to C# and webforms in terms of the type of work and concepts while F#, Scala, Haskell, Erlang, or Clojure would probably be less familiar?
Do you want to work in a setting with a few other developers? Or a lot of other developers?
Do you want to work with *nix boxes in addition to Windows? Work with Systems on a Chip? Distributed computing?
My random advice from the internet is to spend some time examining the wide range of possibilities. It's not that you're likely to get them all, it's just that you might have a better feel of what you're getting and not getting.
Good luck.
I'm sorry if I've missed something, but isn't the status quo a reasonable option?
Other than that, see what other problems your current customers are having that you could help with. Basically you do not want to leap into a completely new arena and start from zero again (some people can pull this off, most don't). Your Delphi to C# thing appears to be a good example of the sort of transitions you can make.
Alternatively, do personal projects on things related to your hobbies or stuff like that. It's a great of motivating yourself and learning new stuff. Often enough, you will find that there is actually a market for what you built.
Also, find dev meetups in your area (assuming you live close to or in a reasonably-sized city) and go there. You tend to get free pizza and there are always people with interesting / intriguing ideas. Sometimes the people themselves are interesting / intriguing.
Also, take a look at AWS Lambda/{Azure,Google}CloudFunctions and Zappa. I guess this "serverless"/lambda/cloud function frameworks are here to stay and it's not easy to figure out how make it work properly.