A little background: Through my teens in the 90’s I did a lot of the things you may expect. I was a script kiddie on mIRC, made a tank game in Unreal Engine, and did some Quake modding. From 2002-2004 I landed a job doing Java web dev, SQL, and overall database administration because my father’s friend needed someone that could do that. I was ok at the job, but not great. Being young, my hobby that turned into a 9-5 made me want to stab my eyes out and I quit.

With that said, I can understand a lot of what’s going on, but it doesn’t “click” anymore. I spent 20 years as a career machinist, but I physically can’t do that anymore. Here’s the rub - my twin brother is a brittle diabetic and can’t work (lots of other stuff going on as well), and our mother is getting old (father passed this year). The only reasonable way forward that I can see in order to be able to support my brother is trying to get back into development.

When I stopped, subversion was what we used. I’m trying to understand Git, but it’s a giant conceptual leap. I guess, what I’d like to hear from you all is a way to jump back in as quickly as possible in such a way that it may be a career.

Thanks

  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    5·
    2 months ago

    All the cool kids right now are mostly on JavaScript/type script. It’s probably a good place to get started since you’ll need it on the front end.

    I’m guessing most work on the U.S. side is react. You can probably pick up a bit of node/react native as you go for the backend and for native dev.

    Java is the new COBOL. Big corps luuuuuuuuurve it. It’s not what I would expect a single dev to use. C# is similar but smaller, if you forget unity game dev. And you should forget unity game dev.

    Rust is basically a less bad C. If you do things you used to do in C, learn rust. If not, don’t.

    Python is also still a thing. If you like it you can probably use it for most things, but if not there are other options.