Re:On finally learning to program at the age of 40
by blaser-waffle on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @10:49AM
(#24421626)
Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuff. He worked for a code shop that built the original system and after he left he kept doing maintenance work on the side until he went (mostly) full time at it.
OTOH, he's basically a one-man show, and has implied that if he had to scale -- e.g. add 3+ people -- then the $$$ wouldn't go as far. By himself it's a decent paycheck, though.
The problem is municipalities are all different, with different state/local requirements, and they often don't have the money or operational depth to support deeply customized software. I grew up near a park that had to shutdown for several months because they couldn't get enough funds together to have people mow the lawns; where would they find the money for custom code?
This actually took me down a long rabbit hole of how local government software is horrible and someone could crush this area — my only concern would be lack of traction as local governments seem to prefer operating in obscurity/making it difficult to hold them accountable.