Being 19 and just finishing my first year of uni, I honestly think its better to go to uni when your a bit older, I think if I was to do my course in 4/5 years I'd probably benefit more, at the moment I party more than I study...so in short no, your never too young to change career (unless you are).

[edit]lol at first I put "Being 199 and just finishing my first year of uni" which is quite fitting for the question.

One thought about the community college thing...
I went to a community college for 1 year. Since I already knew how to code, I decided to take up a major in electronic engineering. As it turned out...I had the worst teacher ever and not a single person in the class learned a thing. We all passed however...but what good did that do anybody???
I now have no desire whatsoever to ever learn anything about electronic engineering that I didnt teach myself in high school. So after that I spent my 2nd semester of that year taking a course in Java. I already knew how to program in a few other languages, and therefore passed with flying colors (once you know 2 or 3 languages you start to realize the similarities as well as differences to look out for between them). Anyhow, the teacher didn't seem that bad to me...but I also already knew all the concepts required, and plus I only attended a couple minutes of class every day since being marked as attending was part of the grade. The final result?? The class started at 25 people...by the end of the semester I counted 7.
Community colleges are great for getting your core classes for a very cheap price...then perhaps transferring to a university to learn the stuff specific to your major. But you should be very cautious taking classes at a dirt cheap school for something like this... I'm sure there are plenty of people that have had great experiences with community colleges...but I would watch out.

On a side note...needless to say I never attended college again after that. Started running a music studio in a really bad part of town...and now (4 years later) I have finally (luckily) landed a job in the programming industry, and gotten away from all that.

But yeah...I agree with the idea that the motivation to apply maths to making video games would probably inspire you to understand those maths a lot more. I say go for it - there's nothing like making your own interactive world where only your imagination will limit you!

Cheers
-Scott

Answer: No

I'm 25 and I'm game Designer for HeadGames. I went out of college at 24. Everything is possible if you got the talent :)

Good luck, and have fun!

Putting your comments and your age together seems like the question is done as a joke.
I was still in college at 23 and not even being any computer related jobs yet.
It doesn't seem like you have much starting over to do if you programmed in your early days (the computer language you use will likely be different).

When I started working after college, I figured I learned all the languages I'd need for my job (C/C++/Java) and then it turned out I was hired for QA and not development. Everyone there knew perl. So I learned perl. Then they said, let's port our tests to python. So I learned python. Since I was in charge of a web-based product, I also had to learn php. Then they said, if you want to lead automation, master Java. So I go back to school and learn a bit more Java.

Long story short, learning programming is the easy part if you can understand the logic and grammar of the language. Most common programming languages today came from the same family (unless you get a strange job), so learning one makes it easy to learn the others.

If I program games though, it will just be casual since I have very little "free" time.

Thanks for the replies people, much appreciated!

To those people who thought the question was in some way a joke, sorry, but thanks for replying in a non-abusive manner!

I'll just add this: I started in games at the age of 35, so I'd say you have time enough. [wink]

hth,
CipherCraft

I've been worried about the exact same thing lately. I'm 24 but have never stopped going to school. I got a BA degree in Japanese, just because it had always been a dream to learn Japanese and live in Japan. Now I've done both and since I didn't really consider making a career out of just Japanese I've been pondering what to do next. But I do feel that I'm getting too old for my own liking when considering getting another degree. I'll be at least 27 when I graduate because the European university standard is generally 3 year degrees, not 4. I'll be 27 when I start my first real job in my life, it's all been summer jobs and part-time jobs with school up until now.
The school system here in Iceland is also very different from most other countries in the regard that we don't graduate from high-school until we're 20, at which point we can enroll in a university.

I've been contemplating a career in either computer science or architecture (which requires 5 years of study) for almost two years now, and finally I chose to enroll in computer science which I'm starting late august this year, and I'm very excited and optimistic about studying computer science and my future in general. Still, I wish a was a bit younger, but like others have said I think its really never too late.

'It's never too late to be what you might have been' :)