Ask HN: Starting a career as a programmer in my mid-40s
Short path:<p>- "Learn Python the Hard Way" by Zed Shaw. 52 exercises to teach you just enough Python to be able to continue.<p>- Next, an <i>excellent</i> course by Reddit's co-founder, Steve Huffman, CS253. It was discontinued from Udacity, but is available on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwxTw4SYaPlLXUhUNt1wINWrrH9axjcI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwxTw4SYaPlLXUhUNt1w...</a><p>It will take you through the basics of the internet, HTTP, browsers, requests, cookies, databases, caching, hasing, passwords, by having you build a web application. Granted, it's on Google App Engine, but still, most of the router syntax out there is similar (webapp2 from web.py, similar to Flask, Tornado, and others).<p>You will learn a lot, and you'll see the result right in your browser by having a live web application. You can then take that knowledge and develop tools for yourself and others and put them online for all to access and use.<p>If you want to do it better and "leap-frog", read Brett Slatkin's "Effective Python: 90 Specific Ways to Write Better Python". This book will make you write code as if you had been coding for years... But, that's only doing it "right", you need something to do right in the first place: you've been in business, strategy, and operations, and you've been trained in mechanical engineering: I think you are in no shortage of ideas and things to code, so have a it.<p>You're in an excellent position of having been at the intersection of a bunch of cross pollinated fields, and you'll have a new skill to bring them together and do wonders. All the best!