Ask HN: How am I supposed to start over as an amnesiac ex-software developer?

What is your (current) stack and where are you based? I know that my company is currently looking for software developers roles in Europe, so maybe I can help (my email is in my profile).

In the meantime, if you are currently unemployed, I would suggest to code something. It will help you rebuild your skills, and you will have something to show to get another job.

Good luck!

For courses, are you talking about undergraduate or graduate courses? Could you approach the profs directly and asking them if you could just sit in their classes? I did that and audited two graduate level courses this year... Whether you sit there or not doesn't really affect the profs in any way as long as there are seats in the class.. They are usually pretty fine with those things, especially given your condition.

Btw, I like your username, Tabula_Rasa. I guess you want to say that you are like a blank slate now?

I don't know anything about this medical condition, but if I were looking to rebuild my brain/skills, I'd go here:

http://projecteuler.net/problems

You can do the problems in whatever language you want. That would help you re-learn both the language and programmatic thinking. After that it's just re-learning APIs and design patterns right?

Honesty is the best policy. While it's reasonable that you can't expect an employer to "price" you to include those years of experience that are now gone, any employer that treats you badly or as though you were smoking weed on your couch for those four years is an employer you do not want to work for in the first place. If you are as dedicated, honest, and hard-working as you say, you'll be a desirable hire regardless of your circumstances. Also, don't let this situation eat you up: I lost six years of development experience to infantry combat deployments that I could not avoid. That's not fair, but life's not fair. If you treat this like a challenge instead of a detriment, you will be a stronger and better person than the next guy (or gal). Chin up, and best of luck to you. :)

Are there any local user groups in the technologies you used to use?

(a) They may put on tech talks, and these may be useful for relearning some of the knowledge you've lost.

(b) You can network, and possibly then find a company that understands your situation... although I suspect this is more of a long shot.

Btw, if you tell us which city you are based in/near, which technologies you used to use, and give us a (new, pseudonymous) e-mail address to contact you on, somebody here may be able to help with (b)... again, this is probably a bit of a long-shot.

As a software developer, university education is not particularly necessary beyond having the degree, which you still have, so I wouldn't worry about that.

As for relearning programming, well, just program something, while reading tutorials, books and courses as needed.

You can either program something that fancies you, something that you believe can be monetized, hack on an open source project or possibly do freelance work.

The only general CS knowledge you need to know that you won't automatically learn by just programming is general algorithms and data structures, which you can easily learn by reading the classic "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, L., R, S. or similar books, or looking at online course materials for a class.

As for the "resume you know nothing about", why not just ask ex colleagues tell you about what you did with them, etc.?

Of course however it strongly depends on your exact background, personality, condition, etc.

If you have brain damage you will probably have to start all over again, maybe it will be easier this time, and the good thing is you are already officially recognized as a software developer so you don't have to care about grades, colleges fees and learning unnecessary and/or outdated crap because you need the credits, plus your working experience will make your CV look awesome, even though you don't remember any of that and you will have to learn it all again if you want to perform as you used to, of course.

On the other hand, if your amnesia is not the result of a physical injury, but a psychological trauma, you should focus on working on your issues with a good psychiatrist: your well being and sanity are far more important than your career, and maybe forgetting all that is your brain's way to tell you it wasn't doing you any good and it wasn't a good idea to learn it in the first place.

I met an artist in New York who had her studio in a basement and got, I think, Mercury poisoning and lost her memory. She told me that she had all these photographic prints and she doesn't remember making any of them, but they're hers, so she was mounting a gallery show with them.

She seemed strangely relaxed about it so I almost didn't believe her. Maybe she had just dealt with enough already.

Just an anecdote for you.

If it is painful for you to relearn then you might consider changing to a different field. But you'll know yourself better if that's worth the start up time. Probably the knowledge will come back after you push through the resistance.

My advice: Take it slow. You express that jumping onto CodeAcademy and such is painful, that's probably because you are overexerting your brain. Programming is a skill that takes years to develop. I understand this is extremely frustrating, but you can't expect to relearn something you learned over the course of 4 years in just a few months.

People who are good at programming often forget how bad they were at it the first few years they did it.

The most receptive mind according to researchers (the violinists research) is one that is relaxed and well rested. If you pace yourself and do things you're uncomfortable with no longer than 2-3 hours per day you'll grow faster than anyone around you.

If however you do more than that hoping somehow to make up for lost time, I fear there's a good chance you'll be let down and perhaps even burned out. Be careful and healthy :)

I don't know where you live, in The Netherlands you could probably get a psychiatrist confirm you are currently unfit for work you were educated for and receive income from the government. I personally would do that and use the time to take it slow.. I think.. I hope :)

Retrograde amnesia doesn't impair implicit memory. Priming effects are still shown for amnesiac people.

This means that you'll be able to relearn your skills much more rapidly the second time around.

As far as the best way to do that, I would give the same advice that is given to anyone: find something you would enjoy working on and try to have fun working at it.

Find a hackerspace, hang out, make new friends, enjoy the company of your peers ..

I'd recommend having a mentor over your shoulder (or available online.) It's hard enough to get started the first time around without battling your own brain. Frustration to the point of being painful is how I'd describe it, and the fix (for me) is to have someone there to spend 5 minutes describing how [esoteric thing] works instead of banging my head against intangible frustrations.

Start on meetup.com and hackerspaces.org or just google for <city/state> <topic> user group.

Clever girl.

It must be very hard,

but make sure at least on the medical/psychiatric side you are getting the best professional help you can,

on the tech/career side, if it was me I start with basic Internship and work my way up, this time I am sure it will be much faster and possibly after a month or two you may find your confidence/skills improving exponentially.

Given what you've written, I guess I have a few questions. I think the idea of an internship (or maybe apprenticeship) sounds about right, but obviously there has to be a "fit".

1) What was your area of expertise before the amnesia?

2) What do you want to do when you've recovered your abilities? (this might be a good time to switch if you've had your eye on something).

3) Where are you?

4) Would you be comfortable working with a (small) team of people?

5) Would you be comfortable being the subject of research?

I don't want to make any representations for my employer (a major university), but after almost 30 years in industry, I've been amazed at both the positive and negative difference between a university and a company. I think a university environment would be a good fit for you. One of the positives I've seen is an amazing willingness to adapt to a person's needs. There are all sorts of classes close at hand (and you can audit them for free), and I think you could probably find a "champion" in someone who is interested in the process of rehabilitating those with your condition.

I imagine that most other major universities would be a similar environment. Ours even has an office that helps students, staff and faculty adapt to their disabilities (or adapts the workplace as needed). If you want to stay in your current area, try the university that's local to you. If you're interested in moving for the right opportunity, I can try to find someone at work to see if something can be arranged. I'm sure there are 30 others here at HN that can do the same at other universities.

> how to deal with the burden of this

Maybe I don't understand your situation well enought but is this really what you want to do?

I got interested in software development when I was 13 years old. Since then I''ve done software devlopoment both as a hobby and professionally. Now, in my mid 40's I work as a software developer and I'm having the time of my life!

My $.02 would be (as others in the thread has recommended) to take it slow. Also, try different things and focus on the things you find exciting!

Stories like this is why I am really focused on becoming financially independent asap. All the best to you, OP.

I do not claim to know much about the condition, nor can claim to understand what it might be for you. However, trying to put myself in your shoes, in whatever manner possible, I can think of a few things:

a. Get in touch with people with similar problems and learn from their experiences.

As I read this, I remembered the story I read not too long ago:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/mayank-sharma-amnes...

http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/32/mayank-sharma-his-...

..and his blog:

http://opensourcebrain.geekybodhi.net/

Now, although the situation is not quite the same, only slightly similar (in terms of loss of memory), it serves as an example. Social networks work excellent as a support group in situations such as these. Not only does it help to learn from people out there who are dealing with the same issue, but also technically speaking -- reusing existing resources is the most optimal and efficient way to (re)build something - be it software or one's life :)

b. Decide on a longer term objective first. A couple of examples:

* You probably are in an unique position to think about how to use technology to help people who are affected by the problems you are facing. Does that appeal to you ? If it does, can you think of a way to use technology as a means to build a platform/app/resource ...etc ?

* If not that, try to answer, what would you like to do ? What, in your definition is a 'software developer' -- do you want to get back to exactly what you were doing earlier ? Or do you want to explore technologies that you probably never worked on before ? ...and why ?

c. When you've got a rough idea of a longer term objective, you shall hopefully know what are the short-to-mid term goals you'd have to achieve in terms of the necessary skills. Write them out. Prioritize and then get cracking.

I know it is easy for me to say it and although I don't suffer from amnesia, every once in a while I try to 'brush up' skills that I don't use in my daily work (read: C :) ) and I suspect that I do. So, I share (at least) a bit of your frustration -- exactly as you said -- "I’ll probably be rolling my eyes at how simple some things are but also getting stuck on relatively basic things until they click again."

...though, I do not think there is another way to approach (re)learning.

d. Do you have access to any of your own code ? ie: code you have written from scratch yourself (as opposed to collaborated on). I would imagine re-reading/re-implementing bits of that might help. I say this because, experience has led me to believe that every programmer has a very individual 'coding style'. Much like prose, coders tend to express themselves in a manner that can be identified as their writing. From choice of variable names, to control flow. Relearning the technologies you knew might be easier if you did it with your own code.

e. Understand that university education will only help you gain a certain level of self-confidence in your abilities. To actually learn anything, you have to 'do'. So github might serve you better than coursera.

f. As far as employment is concerned, that is a different question than the 're-learning' process -- others have suggested options and I do not have any opinion to offer there except that putting your code out there (eg: on github) as well as progress (eg: a blog) might help.

wish you the very best - steve

Stupid advice maybe, but I think that if you make a reddit AMA you'll get a lot of attention, and if you are lucky enough you'll get someone who can help you (like offering an internship).

Don't Panic.

When you start a new job, you'll always have a 2-6 month period of getting to know your colleagues, platform and library stack. Use that time to learn. At the end of it, you'll be back to where you were.

Remember you're in software. An industry that where everything changes every 5 years. After you have a baseline affinity for software & technology, what matters is how fast you can learn and adapt.

Me? I've taught myself everything I know. I moved from UK to Holland at 26 so had to start again (I didn't speak the language, and don't live in Amsterdam - so that was a problem).

Now I'm 32, married, speak fluent Dutch, and have an awesome job working at a start-up in the enterprise space (think Meteor for grown-ups).

Where are you based?

RA has few "fun" causes. Sorry you had/have one of them. Many of them are very recoverable, so hopefully that ends up being your path.

My personal greatest fear is have cancer, have the executive function portion of my brain destroyed by chemo, then survive. I empathize strongly with your situation here

If your former employer had LTD insurance, you may still be able to qualify for it. Look into that for financial support.

Look up your old professors directly, explain what happened. Explain why you can't recognize them, then just ask them to audit the course again. They'll remember you, and will likely offer something.

Additionally, bring yourself up on exceedingly new technologies (ember, helios, etc), that NO one has experience in. Then when you're someone who knows all the latest stuff, rather than someone who forgot some slightly stale stuff.

i can't offer an internship or any really sound advice, but my email is in my profile, and i can offer mentorship and answers to questions from a software developer of over 20 years. feel free to contact me if that will help.

Like almost everyone else here, I have no real experience or education in this area but...

Have you set yourself a realistic expectation? Honestly think about this.

If you've lost 4years of learning, is it reasonable to expect that you can get back to the same place in the space of a short internship or course? No, I really don't think so. I doubt it will take 4 years either but I think you need to set yourself a reasonable expectation so as not to stress/depress/burn yourself out. Perhaps 1-2years?

What were you working on 4 years ago? Was there a side project or something at that time which you could revisit. Ease yourself into it and practice the skills you still have (i.e., your 4-years-ago self). Maybe that's a month or two. Then look at growing your skills from that position. DO NOT look at where you were just before the amnesia and try to get back to that. You might even take a different path.