Transferring from accounting to programming?

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Some things I'm learning about myself are causing me to really consider a change of career.

I got my BBA in Accounting, graduated highest honors, just that the problem came when I found out around junior year - the stuff I liked doesn't exist as a career path; you're either auditing or tax and if auditing look to spend 80 - 110 hours a week at one of the big four firms for $45k a year with ambitions to become a partner somewhere (and for that many hours I figure you could make that at McDonalds). I had to many other interests, too many things I was hoping to accomplish in my life. Long story short - I found myself in accounts payable, it's 90% data entry and I find that high quantity surface tasks I have a way of breaking down at the moment my focus drifts.

I recently got assigned to a company who needed someone with Access skills and found out, on arrival, that they needed a VBA programmer. I'd never really done programming before but it seemed to fit like a glove. Without any education and really a handful of Programming Access videos I was able to build something that sorted a couple thousand surveys, built multiple sorts, exported to excel and pdf from reports and search forms in a desirable format (albeit I really don't like how much work-around was needed to transfer search form results to form data) and I was able to lock the front end down with passwords and wrap up the shift-click override. I also looked at a very difficult Access HR planning system, or really not inherently difficult but because it needs complete redesign and replacement of external VB components that were an unnecessary point of failure. They already had someone one this who wasn't doing well, had me look at it and had confidence but realized they were double-paying so they kicked me out for a minute to figure out how they'd proceed.

The thing I'm realizing about programming - I can see myself doing a lot better with it because it's dealing with significantly larger problems, getting your head around them, and doing the work to get one major piece done rather than dozens of small problems with no inherent relation like I had in level II AP.

So here's the question. Without a computer science degree, what do I want to do in order to transition? Also, if I have a preference to orient myself to initiating and completing mid-sized to large projects on my own or with a couple other like minds, what kind of programming application am I looking at and what kind of language do I want to use? I see that C++ and C# are still quite popular, Javascript seems to be the hiring craze for web development, and Python at least seems like it would have great possibilities in both scientific and business applications.

What I really enjoyed with the little bit of Access VBA experience I got; being at a client, being asked "Can you make something that" blah blah blah and I could not only say yes but make it from scratch on what I was able to learn in a fairly short amount of time.

I'd really love to figure out where I could find stable employment, absolutely willing to put in the work - I think the only thing I might want to take short cuts on is the money; ie. I don't know how much another degree would help me here, whether I'd have the cash for it, and while I'd be okay with getting certifications to get my foot in the door somewhere I'd want to consider whether I'm learning the right language for what I want to do.

Any suggestions?

Having a degree, especially in something useful, shows you have the ability to learn and can take on hassles. Also, nobody learns programming just for the sake of programming--it is a tool you use in order to do what?? Here you know what that what is already.

Your employer might be able to help teach you some of those needed skills and night school might be a 1st alternative.

BTW, my now boss at a loan company ran my loan web page during an interview. I was a penny higher but knew the reason immediately--I didn't want the last payment to be a few cents. Also wish I knew a lot more about accounting but I dropped out when taking junior level courses a few decades ago.

TY.

I'm crossing my fingers right now as I just had an excellent phone screening with a notable company in my area who actually needs someone in a role that straddles finance and IT. My in-person is coming up early next week and if I understand this right may very well be plenty of both cost accounting and analysis as well as some ongoing VBA and .Net programming. This would be ideal for the transition I'm trying to make.

Getting into programming sounds like it might suit you. Have you found code academy yet? https://www.codecademy.com/ has things like python and ruby on it so makes it easier to just use a language without setup.

Also don't forget there is free tooling available for most OS. I personally am on the microsoft stack so use visual studio but depending on what interests you in programming would really say what language to learn in depth and what IDE to get used to.

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( If I ignore a reply it's not intentional I get distracted, send me a PM to prompt me )

TY for the academy.

I have VS and I'm seeing where you can mimic a lot of the form and GUI features Access has. Would love to see if I can build a diary with it albeit I'd want to customize the appearance of the typing space and surrounding a bit past just tweaking background color.

If you're an accountant, then you at least have mathematical skills, which is a prerequisite for good programming. You should also learn boolean algebra and some discrete mathematics before you learn programming as well.

Most jobs these days deal with C#, Asp.net, Angular.js, Java, various database systems, Javascript, PHP, HTML, CSS, and so on. Most of these can be learned on Codeacademy. After learning rudimentary programming skills, you should also learn about agile methodologies (Scrum, TDD, etc.) and the design part of software development; most of the time isn't spent on coding, but on planning and designing.