Yes. Am Welsh. Coal fires are still pretty common in the South Wales valleys. My Grandfather still gets free coal deliveries every other month due to his time working in the pits.
Could ever have a lump sum or coal for life, he picked the coal as the cash payout was around £5000, which would cover the coal cost for about 3 years at the time. He’s been having that for over 30 years at this point, pretty good deal!
It sounds like you’re going to school with much more of a professional interest than an academic interest in software. In other words, you belong more in Software Engineering classes than Computer Science classes.
I got a BS in CS with an AI specialization about 10 years ago and the AI part resulted in absolutely nothing professionally, even though I applied to just as many AI jobs as non-AI. I don’t regret it though, because the classes interested me deeply on an academic level and going to college wasn’t solely about career prep for me.
Python … seems to be something that is not used as a standard backbone language for more enterprise level businesses
This is just flat out incorrect. Sure, very few enterprise programs are built entirely with Python, but many have components written in Python (especially in web), and Python is also a popular choice for build scripts and other internal software development tools. Python makes the process of going from idea to working program faster than any other language, which the bean counters like, so trust me, you will see Python everywhere in the industry.
One last thing, we are 110% approaching another AI winter because businessmen oversold each other on what language models are capable of and now they’re all getting super pessimistic about AI. So unless it’s something you’re passionate about, maybe look elsewhere…
I’d lean towards the Software Development track, partly because that’s my background, and partially because it sounds like it would offer a better foundation in development fundamentals. I suspect AI is going to change significantly over the next couple of decades, so I suspect it would be less future proof.
Am I crazy for doing this later in life?
No. The best time to plant a tree is fifty years ago, the second best time is now.
When you get into development shops, you should discover that you’re promoted based on merit (if not, run). If that’s the case, use your maturity, and you’ll hopefully be able to progress quickly.
By using your maturity, I mean: have empathy for the user, focus on the most important parts of your project first, and speak up when you encounter problems. When I was a fresh dev, I focused on what was technically feasible, did the easy parts first, and tried to fight through problems on my own.
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