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Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

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Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#41

Post by estefan »

roel_v wrote: post #37
bragh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET isn't cool in the start-up world because of the pricing and licensing issues. You can happily start developing a PHP+MySQL application on a used 100 EUR ThinkPad: good free IDEs are readily available (if you even need one), no licensing headaches and can start hosting it with your nearby 20 EUR/month web host with shell access. Although the situation is changing for the better in the .NET world, the hardware cos…

If your project depends on saving $500 on a computer (the one thing you really need to do you job, as opposed to say a carpenter who needs $5000 in equipment just as a basis), is that project really worth doing?

x 5 developers, + unknown extras with an enterprise giant...

There's a good reason you don't hear of many new startups running on a .NET stack.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#42

Post by kasey_junk »

estefan wrote: post #39
m0nty wrote: post #24

49 here, I'm not enjoying working in IT nowadays, I think it got old about 5 or 6 years ago. So I quit and I'm pursuing my own projects, doing some programming, and trying not to worry too much. I could have ground it out for a few months more in that lucrative contract I had, but just how long can I put up with being that bored? Personally, if I have to go back to the circus, I'll probably aim for short contracts or…

I don't want to be a downer, but devops is definitely NOT just a new name for being a sysadmin. We've actively recruited for people who are not old fashioned jump-on-a-box-and-make-hot-changes sysadmins. They need to understand automated infrastructure and deployment through code, so it's not a small niche to just pick up easily. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't pay so well.

We used to distinguish the jump on the box kind vs the write automation kind as amateur vs professional...

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#43

Post by beefsack »

scrrr wrote: post #38

Hm, I am not bored yet, but I think I might be bored in the future. So I was wondering if I should go back to university and study something interesting, Physics perhaps, or even pursue a new career, like becoming an airline pilot or so..

The best advice I've ever gotten in my professional life is "don't solve a problem you don't have yet."

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#44

Post by bragh »

roel_v wrote: post #37
bragh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET isn't cool in the start-up world because of the pricing and licensing issues. You can happily start developing a PHP+MySQL application on a used 100 EUR ThinkPad: good free IDEs are readily available (if you even need one), no licensing headaches and can start hosting it with your nearby 20 EUR/month web host with shell access. Although the situation is changing for the better in the .NET world, the hardware cos…

If your project depends on saving $500 on a computer (the one thing you really need to do you job, as opposed to say a carpenter who needs $5000 in equipment just as a basis), is that project really worth doing?

You willfully mixed up and misrepresented the 2 paragraphs of my post. I hope that wasn't with malicious intent, so I will clarify.

The first paragraph dealt with the 'poor college student in Eastern Europe' side of doing a project, where every dollar counts and must be scraped for. In that world, going for .NET was unheard of, but the situation is slowly changing with VSCode and vNext.

As for the second paragraph, even well-funded projects have limits. Sure, let's say the limit for cost is 50k EUR with 300 EUR/month expected hosting costs. How happy will your client be when your cloud provider changes their pricing scheme and hosting cost is now 10-100x as large? Or when the requirements change and you need to buy some $EXPENSIVE_PLUGIN for that and you are locked in with your technology stack to one provider?

Mainly speaking: why should someone make a company and build some website and fill applications and all that (always with the high possibility of rejection), when you can just do 'apt-get install ' or as an alternative, git-clone-configure-make-sudo-make-install for the same thing? It's all about barriers to entry.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#45

Post by coldtea »

>* I sure miss the "good old days" when you just focused on writing a single app in C that ran on a well-understood machine, or even a single well-understood OS API. But those days are mostly gone. Now it's all distributed, multi-level conglomerates of varied frameworks and languages sort-of working together. I can't decide whether I have any interest in that. I sort of envy the people who can simply state, "I am a Rails dev" or similar.*

Well, there are tons of places that use C developers.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#46

Post by fighne »

I'm 51yrs old, and been in the IT 'game' 33yrs.

Programming is programming, one language is not much different from the other. There are jobs for low level coder's ( think; drivers, kernel porting, RT ). Web has diverged 'front end' or 'back end' take your pick. Work remotely is another option. The niche makes it easy for the employment people to pigeon hole you. If you have that need do a couple of CV's tailored to that niche.

Don't believe the startup 'shit' that only a committed programmer can work there and you need to give 60+ hrs a week. If you get that spiel, get up walk out. They will use you and throw you away.

I've seen 60+ hr code, it's; crap, bug ridden, security nightmare. In the 'Agile' short term for a startup it's great for the long term...! Strange how Facebook changed their moto about 'breaking it' didn't they when it got serious.

I still come across young 'coders' who aren't programmers telling me that JavaScript isn't an Object language. Strange how the function is a first class Object!

I got asked in an interview recently if I could name a design pattern. I responded with "ow you mean 'Gang of 4', how about observer" the reply was " No not the old band and that's a newspaper" I laughed got up walked out. Then sent an email to the CIO telling him the reason his IT stank was that he had inexperienced people working for him. Strange that company no longer exists :)

Sometimes you got to 'pony up', do the 9-5 so have a nice hobby. Take the crap, but not for too long otherwise you start believing it.

When you find the right role you'll know. They don't always pay the greatest, the atmosphere is good, and you'll want to get up in the morning to do it.

Strike a life balance, your mind is your tool. Burn it out and abuse it then you'll loose it.

So you'll find me, sat at a cafe or bar along the Med. My laptop isn't the most modern (actually it's a 5yr old MacBook Air ). I'll be unpicking some crap code, putting in comments, and applying some old proven techniques. If you can stand the smell of Gauloise Disque Bleu, I'll buy you a beer.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#47

Post by volaski »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #29
nathan_f77 wrote: post #27

I don't know if this will help, but I can pick the niche for you. Here are the languages and frameworks you should be learning today: * JavaScript (ES6), Node.js and Express, React You should also get a refurbished Mac Mini or Macbook, and start learning Swift for iOS development. Put together a few simple apps. There's a lot of jobs for iOS developers. A lot of Rails developers seem to be moving on to Elixir and Pho…

I meet a lot of older developers who harp on about assembly and coding mainframes. Sure, it sounds wonderful, but they got fuck all done in a day. You should pick JS, something server side (PHP, Ruby, Python, or Node.js) and react. You'll spend a lot of time configuring libraries and services (webpack or webify) but that's just the way coding is these days. Anyone of us could code some assembler - like OP said, it's…

> Anyone of us could code some assembler - like OP said, it's fun and easy. We teach our 14 years olds how to code assembler - it's that easy. You don't honestly think you can compete with those skills? You need to learn the hard stuff.

Aside from rest of the comments, this is such a ridiculous comment that I can't tell if it's a joke or not. Have you actually built anything meaningful with assembly language?

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#48

Post by manyxcxi »

estefan wrote: post #39
m0nty wrote: post #24

49 here, I'm not enjoying working in IT nowadays, I think it got old about 5 or 6 years ago. So I quit and I'm pursuing my own projects, doing some programming, and trying not to worry too much. I could have ground it out for a few months more in that lucrative contract I had, but just how long can I put up with being that bored? Personally, if I have to go back to the circus, I'll probably aim for short contracts or…

I don't want to be a downer, but devops is definitely NOT just a new name for being a sysadmin. We've actively recruited for people who are not old fashioned jump-on-a-box-and-make-hot-changes sysadmins. They need to understand automated infrastructure and deployment through code, so it's not a small niche to just pick up easily. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't pay so well.

On top of that, there needs to be some Dev to go with the Ops. I've seen some guys who come from a great SysAdmin background that are used to some Powershell or Bash but get utterly lost with Chef or Puppet. Not just that but the overall package of scripts is just messy and very hard to maintain.

That being said- I'd rather have someone transitioning to DevOps with more SysAdmin experience than Dev- the cleanliness and composition can be learned a lot faster than the networking, security, and other topics that most Devs have never had to maintain first hand.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#49

Post by coldtea »

learc83 wrote: post #18
Firegarden wrote: post #6

I am 36 and been contracting full time since I was 22. Really I was only an employee at my first programming job. The concern that you have is of technology stack. The concern you are alluding to is how to stay relevant when being an older person. The first concern is easy. Stick with some fundamentals. JavaScript for example is a perfect choice. By now we should all know JavaScript and another example is the Dom API…

>As for your hourly rate I can tell you from experience the global market is making it very competitive so suck that up. I haven't had much problem with this. I don't compete on price because I can't bid lower than someone who has a cost of living 10x less than mine. One thing I've learned is that the higher your rates go, the less the global market matters. Few companies are willing to pay for $100+ an hour out of c…

>I haven't had much problem with this. I don't compete on price because I can't bid lower than someone who has a cost of living 10x less than mine.

The problem is that those 10x-less cost of living people can increasingly compete on quality too.

Without some sort of protection inside their own country, it's "yay" for businesses and "tough luck" for IT workers. The HB1 (or whatever) visa thing is part of that.

In the end, the situation is not good for those 10x cheaper people either, because it ensures they'll always stay 10x cheaper, as even if their country develops more, there will always be someone underdeveloped with 10x cheaper cost of living to bring their prices down too.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#50

Post by manyxcxi »

roel_v wrote: post #37
bragh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET isn't cool in the start-up world because of the pricing and licensing issues. You can happily start developing a PHP+MySQL application on a used 100 EUR ThinkPad: good free IDEs are readily available (if you even need one), no licensing headaches and can start hosting it with your nearby 20 EUR/month web host with shell access. Although the situation is changing for the better in the .NET world, the hardware cos…

If your project depends on saving $500 on a computer (the one thing you really need to do you job, as opposed to say a carpenter who needs $5000 in equipment just as a basis), is that project really worth doing?

No, but building your project in a language that currently costs 2-10x per production instance with licensing/hosting costs thrown in sure as heck can.

I love C# compared to Java but I write more Java today because I hate Windows and want no part of automating cloud deployments to Windows target servers. So maybe one day when (soon?) .Net Core gets production ready in Linux I'll make the jump- but I'm not going to vastly increase my hosting costs for a language when all of the others can be done on a cheaper, more well suited system.

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