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One was mid-50s, and nearing an early retirement. He'd worked in a dozen or more languages, was working mostly in Python and C (for performance-critical Python extensions) when I worked with him. He'd been significantly involved in the development of the IBM Oberon compiler and environment in the past, as well as done something with OS/2, though I don't know the specifics. Very broad experience, though, including a l…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The ones I am thinking about are people who pick up new things absurdly quickly; pick up on patterns very easily; have general experience in enough domains to make quick connections; etc. That's my experience as well. Generalists are often the most productive people. A good generalist can often grasp the whole system faster than a niche programming language specialist. And you usually don't need those niche programm…
When I stopped programming I moved more into technical testing and that morphed into 'project guru' on some quite large projects. I could understand from low level network protocols up to the big fluffy clouds, I could also pick things up very quickly as I understood all the building blocks if not the latest buzz words. From my first exposure to SQL I was optimising databases better than the incumbent dba within a co…
That doesn't mean much, as in the not so distant past (and in some small shops even today) the resident database expert is far from experienced or even technically apt. In fact, it was and still is a job that was assigned internally to someone who happened to have anything to do with the project, who was thus forced to accumulate yet another responsibility.
I have a strong bias: the university crowd (haven't seen old programmers yet). One guy who was about 24/25. He came in already experienced in creating extensions for clang and LLVM. He wanted to do a masters in cyber security. I told him to get a job, but we became friends instead. When I wrote my first if-statement for an operating system course, he finished the entire program. It was unreal to see. Funnily enough I…
Why do these people even go to uni when its such a waste of time. I went to uni for a year and learned absolutely nothing because it was all so incredibly basic that its only useful if you don't know how to learn on your own.
The most annoying type of people in CS studies I encountered were those who thought they "knew it all" yet in fact, in the large scale, they knew very little. And whatever knowledge they had they often communicated poorly, perhaps disparaging others for not knowing what they did.
I've met two deeply talented software engineering minds in my life, and they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: The first I met when I was in my mid-20s and he was about 17. Gifted kid, absolutely. He'd published a programming book (!) and could do things with JavaScript that, in 2001, nobody had even thought of doing until the mid 2010s. Totally undisciplined of course -- we hired him and he refused to follow an…
Except when you're young you're full of confidence because you know you're good. It just takes you ten years to realise that in order to use it efficiently you have to learn how to get the most from others / let them get the most from you? By the time you're in your 40s/50s you're coming up the other side - still just as talented, but now you can work with people as well?
I've met two deeply talented software engineering minds in my life, and they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: The first I met when I was in my mid-20s and he was about 17. Gifted kid, absolutely. He'd published a programming book (!) and could do things with JavaScript that, in 2001, nobody had even thought of doing until the mid 2010s. Totally undisciplined of course -- we hired him and he refused to follow an…
Uhg, I'd love to be that 50 year old when I arrive at the age. Sadly, I feel like I'm sliding backwards. Oddly, I feel like I was a better, more thoughtful, certainly more energetic developer in my 20's. I think some of it may be that each job I've taken has forced me to change language / platform multiple times. I'm an iOS, android, C++, C, Java, and python developer. All on production level code. Never an expert of…
It has it's disadvantages I'm definitely looked at as an old fuddy duddy because of my language choices. I'm pretty locked in, so if .net dies I'm gonna screwed while I come up to speed on the next big thing.
But it has its advantages too. I'm able to go deeper on a bunch of different parts of the stack than I would if I were having to jump around more. Web, desktop, services, database, mobile and even vba in Excel. There's no way I could be as proficient across the stack as am if I had to be proficient in different technologies. And it's allowed me to feel pretty confident addresssing any business problems as long as it's on the right stack.
40+ I always wonder about ageism in tech referenced regularly here. Without a doubt the rockstars I know are more experienced and consequently older. If you exclude older software engineers you're probably excluding the best talent and thus can't claim to hire only the top x% of talent. Note: I don't belong to this group in age or talent.
I work out in Asia and over here a big reason for ageism in tech is a misunderstanding of development talent, there is a belief that coders are coders and that's all there is to it, young coders tend to be willing to work longer hours and basically work until they burn out so management sees them as the superior option since salaries and benefits are lower. edit: Since I'm getting down voted for whatever reason here'…
May I recommend “The Talent Code”? It’s an excellent book discussing the concept of “talent” in the context of practice and quality attention. The word talent implies something one is born with. Turns out that how good one is at something has much more to do with the quality of the neuropathways generated by specific practice habits.
Most people can get pretty good at a particular task if they dedicate enough time. But you're never, ever going to be as good as Magnus Carlsen, Terrence Tao, Michael Phelps, Euler, or DaVinci just by hard work and a positive mindset.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal...
I've met two deeply talented software engineering minds in my life, and they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: The first I met when I was in my mid-20s and he was about 17. Gifted kid, absolutely. He'd published a programming book (!) and could do things with JavaScript that, in 2001, nobody had even thought of doing until the mid 2010s. Totally undisciplined of course -- we hired him and he refused to follow an…
Same story here. The most talented engineers I know are either in their early 20s or in their late 40s/50s. Of course it's for different reasons. Something many people don't want to admit is that a lot of talent comes from practice and experience, and someone in their 40s is much more likely to have 20+ years of experience than someone in their 20s. The early-20s geniuses I know are talented for different reasons. Th…
