I've got 7-9 year old kids writing games after a few hours of introduction to Scratch. Programming itself *is* easy (and which doesn't require extensive training and education).

I took a free intro course on iphone development on Udemy. I wrote C years ago and do PHP and Javascript now. Until I took the course I had never used X-Code or written any Objective-C. So not a total newbie, but still starting from almost zero. I was shocked at how good the course is and how easy it was to get an ipad app working. There are plenty of free courses of all types available on Udemy so you can test the water to see if you think paying for a course is worth it.

Should have said, 'Hacking is not exclusive to computers.'

I started hacking well before I had access to a computer. I took apart almost all of my toys and anything else that I was allowed to. Hacking has nothing to do with computers. It's all about the desire to understand and possibly improve on systems. Fortunately computers became accessible and affordable at the right time in history for me. Today I program and play with microcontrollers for fun and profit.

People Cannot Memorize Computer Industry Acronymns

I use my Raspberry Pi for a PBX. http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/

RPN for the Win!

I am a bit shy of 50 and still love to code. I have done a lot of different things over the years. Mostly back end stuff, a lot of PHP.

A couple of years ago I jumped on the Javascript/AJAX wave. LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT. Not because Javascript is the perfect language, but because the environment around it is evolving at a rapid pace and there is always something new and exciting to play with. It's hot and marketable now will be for years to come.

I dropped out of the job market about 4 years ago to try some solo gigs. That's when I had the time to really get into Javascript. I did a couple of gigs with Javascript and PHP. The last gig was pure Javascript. I was able to ignore the backend completely and just got to deal with webservices and JSON. The paradigm shifts has been very stimulating/energiziing.

I've been job searching for the past 2 months. Not crazy about the prospects of competing with the young new hotshots. Turned out not to be of problem. I just got hired to do PHP and Javascript and will be paid well to do it. The work will be challenging and exciting, and the company is a great place to work.

You could probably do the same thing. Learn something new and hot and combine it with your deep experience base and use the combination as a force multiplier.

Deathworld and some of his other works are available at LibriVox. https://catalog.librivox.org/search.php?title=&author=harry+harrison&status=all&action=Search

In my opinion Forward's writing is terrible, but his concepts/stories are fantastic.

If you take this route then see these sites:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/
http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/

It was 'More Basic Games' that got me hooked. Best $7.00 I ever spent on a technical book. I still have my copy.

MythBusters 'proved' that motorcycles are not more 'green' than cars. They tested bikes from the 80's, 90's and 00's. In all cases the motorcycles produced more pollution than the cars. They only tested gas milage and pollution levels. They did not mention the manufacturing and recycling impact. Not sure if they used real 'science', but their methods made sense to me.

I have a Roku 2XS. It has a Plex client. I've run the Plex server on my Mac and on an Ubuntu box and in both cases this setup works just fine. I've streamed a handful of movies and TV shows and so far am very satisfied with the results. I have an older Linksys E1000 using stock firmware. I haven't even bothered to optimize my wifi network. With some QOS I might get higher quality streaming but I have an old SD TV so my standards are low. Will get an HDTV sometime this year and will want 720p or better so will probably upgrade the WLAN. When I had the Plex server running under Ubuntu it was running inside of a Proxmox VM. That worked really well. I'm rebuilding the Proxmox host now and will probably go back to that setup.

Festivus for the rest of us!

Or use Chipmonk BASIC. http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/ Yes, we all know that BASIC is evil. But that's how many of us started and it's hard to argue with the instant gratification. Pygame may be a better staring point.