Ask HN: Starting a CS degree at 28?
Maybe this isn&#x27;t the type of answer you&#x27;re looking for but …<p>Today I am 44. I started my CS degree at a Canadian university at 38. I was a self-taught programmer, but had never worked in industry.<p>- What doors will the degree open? Will I still care about those then (i.e., trying to get a job in the US at FAANG).
I don&#x27;t know the answer to this. I&#x27;m eligible to work in the US through another method so I never looked in to it.<p>- I would (hopefully) graduate at 32. Then what?
  I graduated at 44 and found a job immediately. Maybe not a sexy job with a ping pong table in the break room and beer on Friday, but it pays.<p>- Can I both get a CS degree and work full-time?
  I worked full-time, except for in the final year, I worked 22.5 hours for the final push. That said, scheduling everything was … hard. I couldn&#x27;t find a way in Canada take an entire CS degree online (except Athabasca, and I was not interested in a degree from that school). So attending classes, mostly during business hours is required. If you don&#x27;t have a job with flexibility in scheduling you will use a lot of vacation time. Sleep was minimal throughout.<p>- What&#x27;s the opportunity cost, in time&#x2F;money&#x2F;experience?
Only you can answer that. What else is going on for you? What are you going to do with the degree when you&#x27;re done?<p>- How likely am I to complete the degree, given that things in my life could change (opportunities, disease, motivation, depression, passion, love, children)?
Again, only you can answer that. Does taking 3-4 classes a term and working 40 hours a week sound like something you can do? I would work, in one form or another, from 6am-10pm for months on end.<p>I would say only the first 1.5 years worth of classes was easy for someone who could program. After that things weren&#x27;t really programming directly anymore. Once the higher year classes started I was able to aim my projects to things I didn&#x27;t know, or things I knew (depending on how busy I was that school term and how much effort I wanted to put in to a particular class)