Ask HN: Does attempting to finish my CS degree make sense?
I&#x27;ve often seen things on Slashdot, &#x2F;r&#x2F;programming, and HN about how difficult it can be to get hired when you&#x27;re older. If I managed to get the degree, would I be able get any use out of it being mid-30s? I wasn&#x27;t able to get ANY job on my own after trying for a few years, with the job I have now being something I got through vocational rehabilitation, so any extra difficulty makes it seem even less likely that I could get anywhere.<p>Whenever there&#x27;s some kind of discussion about age and programming, there&#x27;s always some people to pop up to say that they&#x27;ve managed fine, but I definitely haven&#x27;t managed fine up to this point, so I don&#x27;t feel encouraged. I don&#x27;t care if other people exist that could get something out of a degree at my age, I&#x27;m concerned about if I could use it, given my situation and problems. Supposedly embedded programming is a bit better about that kind of stuff, but I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s a big enough difference to matter.<p>There not a great variety of programming related jobs where I live (I&#x27;ve checked a few times, with most of what I saw being stuff like database work for a hospital, or &quot;I have this idea for an app&quot;) so I&#x27;d probably have to move.<p>This is complicated by a few things. I take care of a sibling, who has been pretty unwilling to do anything and has been spending the last decade in bed basically all day, with a constantly rotating sleep schedule. (I used to take care of a parent as well, but that stopped after she went to hospice two years ago.) This wouldn&#x27;t make it <i>totally</i> impossible to move, but it&#x27;s still a big ball and chain making things much more difficult.<p>The house I live in is owned by an absurdly generous and well-off relative, who bought it for us to use because my mom had trouble keeping housing straight after my parents divorced (we kept having to move back in with her parents). Deciding how to handle the house if we leave would be another challenge.<p>Another problem I have is talking, and that&#x27;s likely involved in some of my problems.<p>It&#x27;s like verbal constipation. There&#x27;s something that I want to get out, but it takes a lot of pain and effort to make it happen. And when it does come out, it&#x27;s still shit. When I&#x27;m just thinking to myself, my thoughts seem clear, but the moment I try to output them, they get corrupted or something and I keep having to try to reform my sentences until I settle on something usable, which takes time. It feels like whenever the part of my brain that&#x27;s responsible for serializing my internal thoughts into shareable language, besides just being trash, also interferes with the other operations of my brain when it&#x27;s active.<p>With text, I can take the time to eddit and prof red i,t but it takes me a long time to write clearly. I can&#x27;t spend a couple minutes thinking of how to phrase one sentence when talking. I can write a bit faster if it&#x27;s something technical, since basic, wooden speech works fine there, but I still spend time double checking what I&#x27;m saying is correct, writing and testing sample code, or similar things, so I still wouldn&#x27;t call it fast. I don&#x27;t know how I compare to others on that.<p>I was recently recommended a speech therapist, and tried seeing him for a bit, but he was one of the worst therapists I&#x27;ve seen. It very hard for me to see how meeting someone an hour a week will be enough to make any noticeable change to the course of my life at this point.<p>Given these issues, I&#x27;m worried that if I got the degree, it wouldn&#x27;t be something that would make any difference in my life considering the other problems I have. But besides the question of whether or not I can use the degree, there&#x27;s still the problem of actually getting it.