My father in law is 59. He works as the main "maintenance guy" for a large warehouse. He's pretty good with electronics and mechanics, but did not know how to program. He noticed that some stuff could be automated but PLC's were not enough. So, he bought an Arduino board and learnt by himself. Of course, me being a software engineer helped and I put him on the right track or helped him debug stuff. He actually got a pretty nice bonus because the stuff he automated saved the company a lot of money.

But the main point I'm trying to make, is that I would find a problem in my current job/field to which programming can help, and use that to drive the learning.