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Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

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Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

#1

Post by shetill »

I've heard this being said about mathematics and we know that both programming and math are logic based and pretty much require the same thinking techniques and programming is derived from math. So, wouldn't it be true that it's a young man's game for programming too?

You only see top programmers who started as kids and probably won some Olympiads and programming competitions, and this continued in their 20s and maybe kept their skill up till 30s but that's about it. What do they do after that?

I'm 30 and missed my chance to be a kid prodigy in programming or math and clearly not happening now. Is there an area where you can be good at as you get older and what is the old man's game options as a programmer?

Re: Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

#2

Post by andrewstuart »

Errrr. It has nothing to do with age. You can start programming at any age.

What matters is not having youthfully crackling synapses, but motivation, curiosity, hard work. Though a youthful memory certainly would be a help, it’s nothing more than an enhancement to your capabilities. Experience counts for more.

30 is still young to start programming. At 30 you can still spend 30 years programming till retiring at 60.

Full disclosure I’m an “old” guy, but I’m just as passionate, curious, hard working, motivated, technically cutting edge, up to date and interested as I was in 1987.

Re: Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

#5

Post by Arisaka1 »

Software development is different than competitive programming, and while it's true that there's performance degradation with years it's either not meaningful enough for the average software project (or as meaningful as they think), or it's counterbalanced with experience, because there's more to developing software than writing code.

But I'm a career switcher (waiter to software developer) who made the switch when I was 40, meaning I'm obviously against ageism.

Re: Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

#7

Post by laputan_machine »

--I don't think progressing in mathematics is only for young people, fields medal winners are typically in their late 30s, early 40s. I guess whether or not that is "young" depends on you.-- Nope. See child comment.

Anecdotally, my best experiences have been with older programmers. I worked with a guy in his 60s who had some absolutely incredible personal stories to tell (he hitchhiked from Europe to India in the 70s...) but also a wealth of previous knowledge from his decades in the industry. He'd seen a lot, but still had an attitude to learninng (he was writing node.js, ES2020, all the modern gubbins, promises, maps, etc).

I think it's more to do with you as a person. Are you willing to keep studying and learning for the rest of your career? Even if you're not, there will probably be a slew of jobs that are fine for someone who has already "peaked".

TL;DR: I don't believe so

Re: Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

#10

Post by hliyan »

I'm 43 now. I was never a "born hacker". In fact, I only started getting good at coding toward my late 20's. And I began to develop some serious chops by my mid thirties. Of course, the sheer amount of coding I do has gone down -- I do a lot more code reviews and architecture reviews. But during those code reviews, one thing became apparent to me: while younger programmers excel in small, isolated areas of complex code (e.g. some sort of matrix/vector algo), I can run circles around them when it comes to larger code bases, thinking about dependencies when making changes, implications on non-functional requirements (performance, security, fault tolerance) etc.
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