I'm 43. I programmed Basic as a kid on my TSR-80 and tinkered around a bit with things like HTML over the years but didn't consider programming as a career.

I got a degree in an unrelated field, did a lot of different things including manual labor, being a grower on a farm, working on a concrete crew etc. I had a construction contracting business with employees for over 5 years that fed me but eventually went bust. I then got a job as a project manager for a large outfit and was paid fairly well for nearly 10 years. It was extremely stressful with long hours and lots of travel.

I wanted to learn more about programming but just didn't have the time nor discipline. So finally, with a bit of money saved up, I just flat quit about 3 years ago. I started learning Python, Linux, SQL and JavaScript. All day every day. I wrote a bunch of junky projects, found out why they were junky, and did them better next time. I did odds and ends, fixed computers for folks here and there, cut my standard of living back, and kept reading and learning.

I got a break when some people I knew with a mission critical Access business application asked if I could help fix it. I re-wrote it using HTML, Python and Sqlite, set it up on a server, and they could access it from home. They were tickled pink and I got a little more work. It still wasn't enough to pay all the bills though. But I had a number of projects at this point. None on github, but that's not my world. A few weeks ago I saw an ad for a web developer at a large institution here in town (small town...far away from the tech centers) redoing their internal web applications. I went in, talked to the manager (an old perl programmer), gave him links to a few of my projects, (they got a lot better over the years), some sample code and was hired just like that. I start on Monday. I won't make as much initially as I did project managing but hey.... I'm excited. I have the programming bug and it's all I want to do. And I'm an old guy comparatively. So yes, it can be done.....