A programming job with no degree at 45 years?

General
#1

Hello. I wonder if I could get a little advice from people with more experience.
I’m 45. My degree is in music composition. I had a brief gig as a banjo player for a pop star in Romania, which was amazing, but since then not much. I make OK money teaching English, but not enough.
I got into programming through music, using Csound and Pure Data. Then I discovered Python, C and C++, all of which I now love. I wrote one program for composing microtonal music using Python and Csound, but the code is a mess; I didn’t apply a lot of important rules, and I left in a lot of workarounds. Still, I got it to work and impressed a few microtonal composers.
Only since the start of this pandemic, I realized I was not making enough money to be secure. I’d always been interested in programming, but I always figured I’d missed the boat, being 45 now and with no tech degree. Now I’ve read in many places that this isn’t necessarily the case. I’ve also looked up salary ranges for programming jobs, even locally in Romania, and this renewed my interest! What a difference!
I am a nerd and can spend days alone. I can obsess over a problem until I solve it. I made good progress on the Nintendo problem, but finally decided I was wasting time.
Now, just supposing I wanted to prepare myself for a decent programming job, spending not full time on this preparation, how would I start? I’m actually thinking of enrolling in some sort of official course, an online university or something. What else?
Even if I can get a junior job just for a couple of years, it would be an improvement over teaching English and music (money-wise).

Thanks for your insight!

#2

By the way, here’s something else I find confusing. I’ve read that C++ is still among the most sought-after programming languages, and I’ve done some challenges and puzzles here. But any time I see a company looking for a C++ developer, it’s connected to some different library. They want experts in Boost, or SQL, or some other area that isn’t just C++ knowledge. I haven’t managed to determine which ones are most sought-after. And the Code Clashes make me focus on other aspects of the language. Will anyone hire you just for knowing how to use C++ well?
Any advice on that is also welcome!

#3

Well you have a degree in music, can you find anything related that also includes C++ ?

I knew someone who has a degree in art and got a job as developer for a game company by learning C++ so the art degree helped in his case for making 3D models.

Try do something music related in C++ maybe?

You could always try the freelance market : upskill, upwork, freelancer and other websites
Chances are you get paid higher rates eventually if you do well initially.

#4

I think I would take the frontal approach in your place : postulate for a job you’d be okay with and tell them the same things you wrote in this post. If they say no, ask why, that way you’ll know what you need exactly.