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Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

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Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#41

Post by jballanc »

riprowan wrote: post #39
jballanc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plan your exit into management, a related field, or some other job altogether. If you expect to be a coder at age 50 you're going to be disappointed. I'd like to simultaneously disagree and agree with you. If you were a 50 year old coder 10 years ago, then your only hope of remaining in the tech industry would be to add "Manager" to your job title. If you are a 50 year old coder today, that's still a sound directio…

> As a coder it is important to understand that most problems in technology are not solved with more code, but less. That you will generate less code at 50 should be seen as a benefit. This is precisely my argument as a generalist. I may not write code as fast or even as elegantly as I once did, but I'm much, much better at "seeing around corners" to avoid problems, and I'm much more likely to "build the right thing"…

Right, my only quibble with your previous comment was the notion that being 50 in tech means migrating to a management role. I think that advice is slowly (hopefully) becoming outdated as there is more recognition that software engineers have more value than just the SLOC/day they produce.

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#42

Post by walterbell »

Applejinx wrote: post #40
walterbell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't confuse advances in technology with intentional churn generated by vendors and platforms. The latter is a plague, and it doesn't only cost people money, it costs them productivity. Do you think churn is intentional within a single vendor, e.g. to force upgrades? Could churn be a by-product of competition between vendors, e.g. AWS refactored most of enterprise computing into "low-end" services that steadily im…

Yes, I do. Forcing upgrades is just another way to force sales, and that's competition. Churn happens. The old laptop is just the most convenient sort of virtual machine. At some point it'll be easier to run a virtual time capsule laptop… however, the physical time capsule laptop is from a time before intense spyware, so there are security issues as well. As far as niches, Airwindows doesn't market at all. It's only…

Haha, new marketing category: product only available for purchase in a 24-hour period that happens twice a year, or on a date decided by the roll of a dice in a youtube video, or by solving a puzzle, or .. :)

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#43

Post by walterbell »

no_cake wrote: post #34
pjc50 wrote: post #11

To be honest, it isn't and I don't. That sounds rather blunt, but most organisations that aren't startups don't change technology quickly if at all. C++ has served me well for two decades; I probably ought to adopt C++14 but on the other hand my current job requires that the codebase build with a 2008 compiler. I'm also extremely skeptical of the extent to which AI and VR are new , as opposed to incremental improveme…

I have to say, as a student it is very comforting to read this. I've been worried sick trying to learn the things I see people commenting here or in hackernoon. I had the idea that by the time I graduate, these technologies will be trending or have a good market share.

As a student, you can learn how to place "the new shiny" into the context of technology industry history, including academic research papers and industry war stories from teams that built successful products. When you read tech "history" books, the lens of time separates hype from lasting innovations. Also worth going back a few hundred years in engineering history [2] to look at first principles that still apply in the modern world, even though tools have changed.

With historical perspective, you can choose a "v1.0" or even a "v0.1" modern tool with confidence, when you have reason to believe that it's effectively "v255.0" in a lineage of discontinuous improvement that spans centuries.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7952209

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158385

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#44

Post by Applejinx »

walterbell wrote: post #42
Applejinx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Forcing upgrades is just another way to force sales, and that's competition. Churn happens. The old laptop is just the most convenient sort of virtual machine. At some point it'll be easier to run a virtual time capsule laptop… however, the physical time capsule laptop is from a time before intense spyware, so there are security issues as well. As far as niches, Airwindows doesn't market at all. It's only…

Haha, new marketing category: product only available for purchase in a 24-hour period that happens twice a year, or on a date decided by the roll of a dice in a youtube video, or by solving a puzzle, or .. :)

But you're still saying 'purchase', and my market sector is completely dominated by software piracy to the point where it's choking on sketchy and unreliable DRM.

More like, 'new' marketing category: Trust Building Exercise. Attempt to give everything possible away, and see if social pressure can cause a lot of people to go 'yay!' and throw money. Hence the Patreon with literally no tiers above 1$, with at least half the patrons from 2$ to 10$ on their own volition.

The trouble with that (speaking as someone who has some notion of marketing but chooses to undermine it) is, it's one of those power-law relationships where basically you have to be me to do it :) without ten years of sorta grassroots presence in the industry and a large number of successful products that perform well as software, you can't do it. You can't simply start up and have a Patreon work on those terms, even if your products are exactly as good, and this is a problem.

Solving that would be a very big deal but it's a bit beyond me for now…

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#45

Post by hacknat »

pjc50 wrote: post #11

To be honest, it isn't and I don't. That sounds rather blunt, but most organisations that aren't startups don't change technology quickly if at all. C++ has served me well for two decades; I probably ought to adopt C++14 but on the other hand my current job requires that the codebase build with a 2008 compiler. I'm also extremely skeptical of the extent to which AI and VR are new , as opposed to incremental improveme…

This is a good answer. Anyways, I was going to say that hopping a new technology is going to be a lot less profitable than really mastering the old which lots of systems are built on and will be built on, and which new talent never wants to sit down and really learn.

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#47

Post by pjc50 »

trump2016 wrote: post #32
riprowan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you. I started in this field in 1992. I've seen the coming and goings of many flash-in-the-pan technologies. If you are a dev and are selling yourself on your skillset, ask yourself, "is this sustainable?" The answer is "no." A fifty-year-old brain simply does not absorb new technologies as fast as a 25-year-old-brain. If your plan is to continually adopt new cutting edge technologies in order…

Great reply. Interesting how your decision to become a generalist stands in direct opposition to most of the replies to this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13409239 Given that you probably have much more experience than many of the people here, I'm going to assume that your advice is more sound than theirs.

The truth is somewhat in the middle, I think. An experienced generalist is a very different prospect to a graduate "generalist" - in some sense, all graduates are generalists because they don't have experience. See the thread the other day about how many people with physics degrees crosstrain into tech and programming.

Generalism is insurance, while specialism can be more profitable if the speciality you pick ends up in demand.

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#48

Post by luisehk »

Well, a critical eye is a must. Just keep away from the noise and pay attention to what would really make an improvement on your current framework/workflow.

For example, I still do my web development in Django or Flask because they do the job, I'm pretty good at Python and most projects don't really need the concurrency Go or Elixir offer.

One of the best recent additions to my skillset was Docker... a lot of people say containers are not a must but they really made my life easier and allowed me to do cool things for clients from different industries.

It doesn't sound as cool as doing machine learning, computer vision or natural language processing, but don't let the AI/VR hype make you anxious, just focus on what you really want to do.

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#49

Post by riprowan »

jballanc wrote: post #41
riprowan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a coder it is important to understand that most problems in technology are not solved with more code, but less. That you will generate less code at 50 should be seen as a benefit. This is precisely my argument as a generalist. I may not write code as fast or even as elegantly as I once did, but I'm much, much better at "seeing around corners" to avoid problems, and I'm much more likely to "build the right thing"…

Right, my only quibble with your previous comment was the notion that being 50 in tech means migrating to a management role. I think that advice is slowly (hopefully) becoming outdated as there is more recognition that software engineers have more value than just the SLOC/day they produce.

Ah, I see. I agree. I think "management" includes lots of quasi-technical roles, in which people and project leadership are the core skills, with one's technical base serving as a platform for managing others with highly focused technical skill sets. Hopefully you are also right that these jobs are increasingly in demand.

Re: Ask HN: With such fast changes in technology, how do you update your skillset?

#50

Post by riprowan »

pjc50 wrote: post #47
trump2016 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great reply. Interesting how your decision to become a generalist stands in direct opposition to most of the replies to this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13409239 Given that you probably have much more experience than many of the people here, I'm going to assume that your advice is more sound than theirs.

The truth is somewhat in the middle, I think. An experienced generalist is a very different prospect to a graduate "generalist" - in some sense, all graduates are generalists because they don't have experience. See the thread the other day about how many people with physics degrees crosstrain into tech and programming. Generalism is insurance, while specialism can be more profitable if the speciality you pick ends up…

I must add that I have undergraduate and graduate technical degrees and spent from 1983-2005 building lots and lots of apps (I started coding at ~ age 15). So I pursued "generalism" only after being a reasonably qualified (but not specialized) technologist.
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