Never too late
First off, congratulations on following a dream!
For starters, I have been programming for over 20 years professionally (C/C++, Java, C#, objective-c, etc.). I have spent 10+ years in the corporate world and another 10 as a partner in two start-up companies. I am also a musician (I play keyboards for my church's worship team), but not professional in any way there... lol. Oh, and I am in the US.
Here's my take...
If you truly love the field and are truly committed to following an ever-changing landscape of platforms, languages and paradigms... then go for it. It is NEVER too late. If this is something you are looking to do professionally, then I'll assume you have already proven to yourself that you have the aptitude. If not, then make sure of that first.
University education is great for the theory, but you MUST have practical hands on experience to draw from. My best advice to getting experience without yet having a job in the field is to build a side project in your language of choice. Not some little sample project, but something you actually WANT to use that requires a decent amount of work. If the project is right-sized, it can fill that gap nicely until you get a chance to do something professionally full-time. I am sure you could think of something useful for your current field as an idea. Something web-based possibly, with a middle-tier and a database back-end would be a great experience builder. Pay for hosting (it's super cheap), build the app little by little over time. Blog the experience to detail the challenges and how you overcame them. Refactor something to make it better as you learn more - blog about that. This becomes a bit of a living resume. I also think you will learn more from this than from most university courses. You will be forced to learn more - and if you care about using the platform you are building, then you will learn even more because you will care about the end result. This would all be HUGE in an interview.
You already have a degree, if you are a motivated and disciplined self-learner, then I would seriously consider this as an alternative to the university study. It could also compliment it, but it may not be practical to do it all AND still work full-time at your current job. Your poor wife would never see you (never neglect your role as spouse!!!!).
I hire based on aptitude more than experience. I do not care where someone did what they did or if they got paid for it... I want to know they understood it, that they overcame challenges, that they knew the framework they used very well. You will NOT get this from university course work. A lot of people in the field are surface level programmers. They know how to use a framework (barely) to piece something functional together but they do not know how the framework works. They let too many aspects remain black box to them which reduces their value. You have to be the type of person who will dive "under the covers" when necessary. Too many that I interview are lazy in this regard. Don't be! Your ability to do that will make you stand apart from the rest.
I'm 42 and I am constantly picking up new languages and platforms because I enjoy it. As an architect, I do not get as much hands-on coding time on the job as I feel you need to get to stay "in touch" so I always have something going on the side to give me that. I just picked up iOS development in the past year, built one side project and am working on another that I actually have someone interested in putting serious funding into. So, it is never too late. One of the great things about this field is that there is so much flexibility in the various opportunities you could get involved with.
All the best to you. It is a great field and I can tell you first hand that it is difficult to find talented developers, so there is more than enough opportunity.
Michael
