Problem making solidity contract compatible with version 0.5.0 or higher

Question

pragma solidity >=0.5.0 <0.6.0;

contract Courses {

    struct Instructor {
        string  age; //add memory to struct varibles  
        string  fName;
        string  lName;
    }

    mapping (address => Instructor) public instructors; //added public
    address[] public instructorAccts;

    function setInstructor(address _address, uint256 _age, string memory _fName, string memory _lName) public {

        Instructor memory instructor = Instructor(_age, _fName, _lName); 
        instructor[_address] = instructor;
        instructor.age = _age;
        instructor.fName = _fName;
        instructor.lName = _lName;

        instructorAccts.push(_address) -1;
    }

    function getInstructors() view public returns(address[] memory) {
        return instructorAccts;
    }

    function getInstructor(address _address) view public returns (uint, string memory, string memory) {
        return (instructors[_address].age, instructors[_address].fName, instructors[_address].lName);
    }

    function countInstructors() view public returns (uint256) {
        return instructorAccts.length;
    }

}

Answer 1

Your code had a couple small bugs in it:

struct Instructor {
    uint256 age; // wrong type (was string)
    string  fName;
    string  lName;
}

...

function setInstructor(address _address, uint256 _age, string memory _fName, string memory _lName) public {
    Instructor memory instructor = Instructor(_age, _fName, _lName); 
    instructors[_address] = instructor; // typo: instructor instead of instructors

Answer 2

Or just:

function setInstructor(address _address, uint256 _age, string memory _fName, string memory _lName) public {
    Instructor storage instructor = instructors[_address];
    instructor.age = _age;
    instructor.fName = _fName;
    instructor.lName = _lName;
    instructorAccts.push(_address) -1;
}

Explanation: https://blog.b9lab.com/storage-pointers-in-solidity-7dcfaa536089

Steve is right about the wrong type assigned to age in the struct. Everything he said, actually, completely agree.

A concern I have is this function is open to anyone and it doesn't check for the possibility of overwriting important information.

This can help: https://medium.com/robhitchens/solidity-crud-epilogue-e563e794fde

Also, the getInstructors() function returns an array of arbitrary size. This is a scalability concern because it will not always work or will be become too expensive for practical use. https://blog.b9lab.com/getting-loopy-with-solidity-1d51794622ad (Internally, the array is iterative).

I'm guessing this is experimental/ These are pointers about where you might want to take this.

Hope it helps.