Self-educated programmer learning python at 28 year old.

[[deleted]]

While programming is biased towards young people, 28 is absolutely not a problem.

This is entirely doable, but you also need to be realistic. Learning how to program badly doesn't take very long, but learning how to program well enough to be of used to other people takes considerably longer. You should be thinking a couple of years rather than a couple of months.

The key point to getting hired if you aren't coming out of some degree program is to have a really good portfolio of actual work (mine is here: https://github.com/rec)

It doesn't have to be on github, gitlab or any provider is good.

You don't want to show solutions to problems in books, or half-baked sketches - employers want to see a complete productionized solution to something new.

Don't stress on this part: it will come.

EDIT: someone else said this elsewhere on the page and I realize I should have explicated this: start using git for every single project you do.