Am I too old to learn a new language?
Hello all. I've watched a lot of Prime's videos and every once in awhile he talks about how there's a lack of older developers in the industry. My question is fairly simple: am I too old to learn a new language?
For context, I am 33 and started programming when I was 25, but took it really seriously when the pandemic hit and I had a lot of free time. Obviously, I graduated from YouTube University, didn't do traditional CS programs at my university, and learned primary JS/TS to build React apps.
I've never worked in big tech, or just any tech company in general. I primarily worked with clients for one-off jobs that would take 3-4 weeks to complete. I was really happy and making decent money. However last year, I hit a wall. I decided I couldn't stomach typing another create-next-app command. There was this burning sensation that I needed to learn something more, something deeper. So, I picked up Rust. I spent maybe 48 hours on it, quit and picked up Golang. Not even 3 days in, it clicked and I got the high. I felt that euphoria of learning something new again: concurrency, grpc, name any buzz word and I felt the high of using it in Golang. Suddenly, I wanted to rewrite everything in Go.
Fast forward to today, and I still really love Go. It's easy for me to scaffold apis and simple backends , easy to maintain over time, and can be easy for others to pick up in case the clients need support. Right now, I have a engineering job in the sports industry, and I love what I work on and make great money doing it. I didn't necessarily learn Golang to pick up a FAANG position, but I wanted to learn it so I can be a better dev to a smaller company that needed someone like me, like I am right now. Also, I just wanted to experience what it's like to not be a soy dev for a bit.
But now... I have a burning desire (guilt) to learn another language that isn't web focused: C, C++, Java, etc. But I'm struggling with feeling like I am too old to pick this up and pursue it. Especially considering it feels like every day I see a new 14 year old spawned on YT with the sickest nvim set up, building god knows what at 300 wpm in C. Also, I do want to use what ever language I learn to bolster my career and skills to offer.
So I'll ask the question again, am I too old to learn?
Posted Jul 9, 2025, 4:18 AM UTC