Not Just Any Old Geek • Hacker News Board

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#201

Post by pmoriarty » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #181

coldtea wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff that's being done today. Like holly shit most people weren't even using source control back, unit testing and automated testing in general was SciFi, it was done by QA departments if you were big enough to do it. That stuff a competent graybeard knows already. You don't think they disappeared in 1990 and re-appeared magically tod…

I mean if you were a good dev in the 90s chances are right now you're in some senior architect/management/consultant position. If you're competing for the same jobs as 20 something devs then you've probably screwed up somewhere in your career. I started programming in late 90s but not professionally until 2006 I think, this was probably the late phase of transition to internet as a dominant factor in computing - so I…

"I mean if you were a good dev in the 90s chances are right now you're in some senior architect/management/consultant position. If you're competing for the same jobs as 20 something devs then you've probably screwed up somewhere in your career."

Not everybody's interested in climbing the corporate ladder or in architecture, management, or consulting. Some people are content to be senior engineers.

"we've come a loong way as an industry"

The industry has certainly changed a lot, but if you keep your skills up to date, that's not going to be an issue.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#202

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:40 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #136

optionalparens wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the parent is sarcasm, please disregard my reply. > The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff that's being done today. Not even remotely true. Most of computer science is built on the past and either composed into something new upon a previous foundation, or a poor re-implementation of an already existing idea. A trendy favorite of many at the moment, Go lang is a good…

Like I've said the stuff that hasn't changed much is the CS, the actual engineering part has nothing to do with what we do today. 20 years ago the net was nowhere nearly as ubiquitous, hardware was incomparably slow, the bottlenecks were different - the focus shifted from single computer/mainframes/shared memory models -> distributed computing. When I say copy paste in visual basic I'm talking about professional prog…

I'll give you that the tooling is quite a bit better these days, but that's it. Practices are as horrid as ever. Cut-pasting from Stack Overflow seems like something every new grad knows how to do, and is everywhere. Not sure about your focus on design patterns--I'd often call their use a negative, not a positive. When faced with a problem, a good developer asks, "How can I solve this?" A bad developer asks, "I must find some named design pattern to mash this problem into."

At its core, 90% of professional programming is:

1. Plumbing: Routing data from this component to that one through this API

2. Processing: Algorithms, most which have been published for decades)

3. Formatting: Ingesting data in format A and displaying it for the user in format B.

This is true today, was true when I started, and was true 20 years before that.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#203

Post by rubber_duck » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:43 PM UTC

optionalparens wrote: post #179

rubber_duck wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I've said the stuff that hasn't changed much is the CS, the actual engineering part has nothing to do with what we do today. 20 years ago the net was nowhere nearly as ubiquitous, hardware was incomparably slow, the bottlenecks were different - the focus shifted from single computer/mainframes/shared memory models -> distributed computing. When I say copy paste in visual basic I'm talking about professional prog…

We don't really have many true standards, just pockets of consensus on best practices and collections of so-called standards that are quite often ignored. Thanks to better communication, I think it's safe to agree that these practices are more widespread. As a result, yes, quality for certain groups has definitely increased. I think you underestimate the fact that a large number of people actually do not follow these…

Yea I think I agree with what you said, especially that the increased communication helped this (I remember when I started programming I didn't have access to internet and once I actually got it it was a complete game changer in terms of learning).

And don't get me wrong I don't think what we have today is anywhere near perfect or even good, frameworks are often more trouble than worth but at least frameworks showed people that isn't the only way to write code - I do not want to go back to those days.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#204

Post by codeonfire » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:47 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #181

coldtea wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff that's being done today. Like holly shit most people weren't even using source control back, unit testing and automated testing in general was SciFi, it was done by QA departments if you were big enough to do it. That stuff a competent graybeard knows already. You don't think they disappeared in 1990 and re-appeared magically tod…

I mean if you were a good dev in the 90s chances are right now you're in some senior architect/management/consultant position. If you're competing for the same jobs as 20 something devs then you've probably screwed up somewhere in your career. I started programming in late 90s but not professionally until 2006 I think, this was probably the late phase of transition to internet as a dominant factor in computing - so I…

Typical ageist bullshit. Your argument is if someone is good at something then they are probably not doing it anymore. Newsflash, you were moved out of dev because you have some issue. Most people avoid "architects" which is code for cranky bastard who can't be fired but is likely breaking lots of stuff in the codebase and generally making things bad for the devs of all ages.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#205

Post by mark_l_watson » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

lubonay wrote: post #184

mark_l_watson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://leanpub.com/haskell-cookbook

Hey, I noticed a couple of things you might wanna improve in your leanpub profile page: 1. The first sentence has the word "Consultant" twice in a row 2. The first paragraph mixes first and third person, i.e. "Mark Watson is an awesome programmer. I use a bunch of techs" 3. The profile pic is stretched horizontally

Thanks, I will edit that right now.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#206

Post by atoko » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:51 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #134

uola wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, even as I'm getting older, this isn't at all obvious to me. Someone with five years solid experience with web development might very well be far more effective than someone with twenty years experience of working in corners of large companies with various technologies, especially when you consider the expected salary. I think it good that people are talking about these things, but sometime it seem like peop…

This is one thing that really worries me. I'm in my early 30s, and I'm perfectly content working a mid-level position. I've seen people my age pass me by several times, and I'm fine with that. I'm not good enough to keep up with the really good engineers, and it's probably going to be a long time before I have 'Senior' in my title, if ever. When I'm in my 50s, I'm just not going to be one of those awesome elder coder…

If you haven't adapted in 20 years, is it really ageism?

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#207

Post by collyw » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #92

czep wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times? If you were wrongly convicted and awaiting a death sentence, would you pick a 22 year old attorney fresh from law school to defend you? If you have a field full of tomatoes that needs picking, do you save a few dollars…

Umm the more comparable parable would be "or the proverbial graybeard who has done ~~it~~ kidney surgery a thousand times" The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff that's being done today. Like holly shit most people weren't even using source control back, unit testing and automated testing in general was SciFi, it was done by QA departments if you were big enough to do i…

I see the opposite, rehashes of old ideas rebranded as the latest new hottness. NoSQL was basically what everyone was doing before relational databases came along. Clojure is a Lisp dialect running on the JVM. ORM's are great until you need some complex query, then it helps to know SQL. Algorithmic complexities are the same whether you were squeezing things into a tiny underpowered computer or if you are dealing with terrabytes of data.

Security was abysmal probably because there were nowhere near as many threats.

Some things change. None of it goes away.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#208

Post by Roboprog » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:55 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #160

czep wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times? If you were wrongly convicted and awaiting a death sentence, would you pick a 22 year old attorney fresh from law school to defend you? If you have a field full of tomatoes that needs picking, do you save a few dollars…

> If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times? If you were hiring, you would want the starry eyed, finger in the pulse of latest fads, young programmer you can pay less, overwork, boss around, and screw over, or the senior engineer, who values sane hours and time…

Soooo.... Tomato pickers it is! :-)

Good counterpoint, liked both this and the grandparent comment. Ouch.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#209

Post by carbocation » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:56 PM UTC

czep wrote: post #85

uola wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, even as I'm getting older, this isn't at all obvious to me. Someone with five years solid experience with web development might very well be far more effective than someone with twenty years experience of working in corners of large companies with various technologies, especially when you consider the expected salary. I think it good that people are talking about these things, but sometime it seem like peop…

If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times? If you were wrongly convicted and awaiting a death sentence, would you pick a 22 year old attorney fresh from law school to defend you? If you have a field full of tomatoes that needs picking, do you save a few dollars…

As a cardiologist, I would prefer to refer my patients to the cardiac surgeon who is the most skilled, regardless of their time out of training. Similarly, I don't think that a programmer's age tells me much.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#210

Post by draven » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:59 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #84

jwr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't worry. We can actually Get Stuff Done, which at the end of the day is what really counts. Inexperienced young programmers working 2x the hours do not necessarily produce Output That Works (I know, I've been one myself). Sure, not every company will realize that, but then again, you don't necessarily want to work for every ping-pong table company, either. Cultural fit and all that.

> We can actually Get Stuff Done, which at the end of the day is what really counts It's harder for me to "get stuff done" when then "stuff" is bullshit. There are times when what's being asked for is wrong (stealing code/images/whatever), or a wrong solution to the problem. "Right/Wrong" can be subjective, so I shy away from making those snap judgements until I know more about why something is being asked for, but a…

> It's harder for me to "get stuff done" when then "stuff" is bullshit

Same here, I guess tolerance to bullshit diminishes with age. Perhaps it has to do with experience. I cringe when asked to do something that will increase technical debt because I can see what it will be like repaying that debt in the future. Younger me could not see that far.