无论什么时候开始学习都不会太迟

Quora question: Is twenty-six too old to become a developer?

来自Quora的一个问题：26岁才开始做开发会不会太迟

My answer:

The simple answer is “Absolutely not”.

比较简单的答案是，“一点都不会”。

The complex answer, I want to share you a real story which is happening around me.

再说稍微复杂一点的答案，我想跟你分享一个真实的故事，就发生在我的身边。

Several years ago I knew a 26-years-old guy who works as a market commissioner. Market commissiner is a boring and low-paying job in china. One day he asked me weather he is too old to study programming? He wanted to change his job because programmer is a decent work with higher incoming. “Sure, no problem”, I answered. And I suggested he start from PHP language, a skill shortages specific to Chinese Internet companies. He accepted my advice and started reading PHP documents and studying by following the official tutorial.

几年前我认识一个26岁的家伙，是做市场专员的。在中国，市场专员是一个很枯燥并且低工资的工作。有一天，他问我现在才开始学编程会不会太晚。他想换工作，因为程序员是个还算体面的并且收入也不低的工作。“当然不会太晚，没问题的”，我是这么回答他的。然后我建议他从PHP开始学起，因为中国互联网公司还是比较缺PHP人才的。他接受了我的意见，并且还是看PHP文档，然后看官方教程。

He did find a coding job after 4 months, although the salary was’t very high, however, he becomed a programmer! He was glad and worked hard to improve his technical level, then, he got another job at a bigger company after half a year. Then just after one year later, another large company asked him to join them. Today he is really a good programmer. Can you imageine that he started from a market commissioner?

4个月后，他找到了一份编码的工作。尽管工资不是很高，但他真的成为一个程序员了！他很高兴，并且很努力地提高自己的技术水平。半年后，他在一家更大的公司找到了工作。仅仅一年之后，另外一家大公司邀请他加入他们。现在他已经是一个非常优秀的程序员了。你能想象他原来是做市场专员的吗？

Yes, programming is not easy.A good programmer has to learn a lot, for example: mathematic, arithmetic, data structure, OS… and master several programming languages. But this is not the the full story. The aim of programming is solving problem. In many cases, the problems that you are facing don’t appear to be so difficult, which can be solved easily and don’t need so much knowledge and skill. So if you do not remain satisfied with this, you would continue to improve through the continuous learning and experience.

是的，编程不是一件容易的事情。一个优秀的程序员需要学习很多东西，比如数学、算法、数据结构，操作系统……还得掌握好几门编程语言。但这不是编程的全部，编程的目的是解决问题。大部分情况下，你所面对的问题其实都不会很困难，你不需要很多知识与技能就可以轻易把它解决。但是如果你不满足现状，你可以通过不断学习与积累经验去提高自己。

This is an age when people live far longer, we all have opportunity to keep learning something new for decades, and get what you want one day. I believe it’s never too late to start studing anything.

现在这个时代，只要我们还活着，我们都有机会去学习一些新的东西，并且得到你想得到的。我相信无论什么时候开始学习什么东西都不会太迟。