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Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

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Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#11

Post by thesmallestcat »

Zyst wrote: post #10
thesmallestcat wrote: post #2

Hm. The author works for a web/mobile development agency and uses React Native and GWT as examples of the new and the old, respectively. I hope it isn't news to anybody here that this sort of work is a race to the bottom and has such turnover precisely because it's mostly being done by junior developers. Linux systems programming arcana, for instance, doesn't disintegrate so quickly as the ten years the author cites.…

Twentysomething year old here, so you know, not like you don't have a point but: >the other reason is because it's easy/boring as hell I legitimately think front end development is not only very fun, it can have some really challenging aspects. I wouldn't think there's any programming challenge that is inherently easier because it's on web as opposed to something else. Of course I bet there are domain-specific tasks…

I was only speaking for myself. The challenges got old and most of the work felt like framework jockeying; it was work I could do in my sleep apart from the sweat of learning new tools. I won't deny that there are some exquisite challenges in frontend development, but most of the paying work does not involve them and is pretty CRUD-oriented. Also I was referring to web development in general, not just frontend.

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#12

Post by smoyer »

Apparently old is a matter of perspective ... To me not quite 40 is still a young'in.

I'm over fifty and just got back from presenting at a major conference. I've managed to say current through 35 years of embedded systems design (hardware and software) as well as a stretch of software-only business. It's really not that hard if you understand your job is to continually be learning. I must be doing it right because often those I'm teaching are half my age.

As an aside, I've done the management track and moved back to the technical track when I found it unfulfilling.

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#13

Post by delinka »

I'm a bit older than the author. Every time I feel like I'm "out of touch" with the hip new thing, I take a weekend to look into it. I tend to discover that the core principles are the same, this time someone has added another C to MVC; or the put their spin on an API for doing X; or you can tell they didn't learn from the previous solution and this new one misses the mark, but it'll be three years before anyone notices (because those with experience probably aren't touching it yet, and those without experience will discover the shortcomings in time.)

When learning something new, I find that this group implemented with $NEW_THING in a completely different way than that group did an implementation with the exact same $NEW_THING. I have a harder time understanding how the project is organized than I do grokking $NEW_THING. And when I ask "why not $THAT_THING instead?" I get blank stares, and amazement that someone solved the problem a decade ago.

Sure, I've seen a few paradigm shifts, but I don't think I've seen anything Truly New in Quite Some Time. Lots of NIH; lots of not knowing the existing landscape.

All that said, I hope we find tools that work for people. Remix however you need to for your own edification. Share your work. Let others contribute. Maybe one day we'll stumble on some Holy Grail that helps us understand sooner, be more productive, and generally make the world a better place.

But nothing's gonna leave me behind until I'm dead.

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#14

Post by glandium »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #7

This statement is false > Half of what a programmer knows will be useless in 10 years. and the rest of the article seems to be based on it so it negates much of what is said. Foundational knowledge does not decay. Knowing how to estimate the scalability of a given design never gets old. Knowing fundamental concurrency concepts never gets old. Knowing the fundamentals of logic programming and how backtracking works ne…

How exactly are you contradicting that sentence you're quoting? In fact, it seems to me you're confirming it. He didn't say that everything a programmer knows will be useless in 10 years, but that half will. You're only enumerating the half that won't.

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#15

Post by skybrian »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #7

This statement is false > Half of what a programmer knows will be useless in 10 years. and the rest of the article seems to be based on it so it negates much of what is said. Foundational knowledge does not decay. Knowing how to estimate the scalability of a given design never gets old. Knowing fundamental concurrency concepts never gets old. Knowing the fundamentals of logic programming and how backtracking works ne…

I think you're talking about the other half (which isn't useless).

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#16

Post by [deleted] »

Zyst wrote: post #10
thesmallestcat wrote: post #2

Hm. The author works for a web/mobile development agency and uses React Native and GWT as examples of the new and the old, respectively. I hope it isn't news to anybody here that this sort of work is a race to the bottom and has such turnover precisely because it's mostly being done by junior developers. Linux systems programming arcana, for instance, doesn't disintegrate so quickly as the ten years the author cites.…

Twentysomething year old here, so you know, not like you don't have a point but: >the other reason is because it's easy/boring as hell I legitimately think front end development is not only very fun, it can have some really challenging aspects. I wouldn't think there's any programming challenge that is inherently easier because it's on web as opposed to something else. Of course I bet there are domain-specific tasks…

[deleted]

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#17

Post by dsjoerg »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #2

Hm. The author works for a web/mobile development agency and uses React Native and GWT as examples of the new and the old, respectively. I hope it isn't news to anybody here that this sort of work is a race to the bottom and has such turnover precisely because it's mostly being done by junior developers. Linux systems programming arcana, for instance, doesn't disintegrate so quickly as the ten years the author cites.…

When it's easy / boring as hell why not make the computer do it?

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#18

Post by iamleppert »

You don't need to learn React or Angular or another framework. Spend your time getting really good in your preferred stack of choice. That could be a framework or something of your own creation. Do not go to work for a company that only wants to hire people familiar with a specific framework. It's a huge red flag. The work will be boring and the team mediocre. More often than not there will also be culture issues.

Great companies who have interesting projects will want to see what you've built in the past; the technology is just a tool. They will trust you to use the right tools for the job, and will respect you enough to let you pick those which you prefer.

For legacy systems, it's helpful to have some experience but it's not like you won't be able to be effective if you're good given sufficient ramp up time.

In my experience it's far better to hire the smart, motivated engineer who can actually get stuff done and has created high quality software before than someone who is an expert in a specific framework.

Also I avoid going to tech conferences about web stuff, unless it's a legitimately new technology. A new way to organize your code and conventions are not new technology, it's just some guy's opinionated way of doing things. And most of the talks are less about conveying useful information that will help you and more about the speaker's ego and vanity.

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#19

Post by EpicEng »

Zyst wrote: post #10
thesmallestcat wrote: post #2

Hm. The author works for a web/mobile development agency and uses React Native and GWT as examples of the new and the old, respectively. I hope it isn't news to anybody here that this sort of work is a race to the bottom and has such turnover precisely because it's mostly being done by junior developers. Linux systems programming arcana, for instance, doesn't disintegrate so quickly as the ten years the author cites.…

Twentysomething year old here, so you know, not like you don't have a point but: >the other reason is because it's easy/boring as hell I legitimately think front end development is not only very fun, it can have some really challenging aspects. I wouldn't think there's any programming challenge that is inherently easier because it's on web as opposed to something else. Of course I bet there are domain-specific tasks…

Well, sorry, but... it is. Maybe you find it interesting, that's subjective, but there's no real technical challenge in front end stuff. You're not solving hard engineering problems; you're pasting together libraries other people wrote on top of libraries other people wrote (and on it goes) and searching google to figure out why your opaque stack doesn't seem to be working.

Developing a good UI is difficult, no question about it, but not for technical reasons. Whether you resent that or not doesn't make it any less true.

>I wouldn't think there's any programming challenge that is inherently easier because it's on web as opposed to something else.

Not because it's on the web, because front end work doesn't require anything more than knowledge of your toolset and some design sense.

It's nearly all "hey, build a UI with some CRUD functionality which is essentially the same as the 100 you've built before, but for this special snowflake customer." Bleh.

Re: Reflections of an “Old” Programmer

#20

Post by tluyben2 »

smoyer wrote: post #12

Apparently old is a matter of perspective ... To me not quite 40 is still a young'in. I'm over fifty and just got back from presenting at a major conference. I've managed to say current through 35 years of embedded systems design (hardware and software) as well as a stretch of software-only business. It's really not that hard if you understand your job is to continually be learning. I must be doing it right because o…

People over 30 feel 'old' every 10 years. That's nothing new; it's not even 'programmers are 20something'; people becoming 30-40-50-60 have all been saying 'now I am old' while we stand to become 90-100 (at least in western EU), so 60 is not that old. 40 (i'm 41) is spring chicken and I look forward to many years telling my younger colleagues that the latest thing, however interesting to learn about, is not always better.
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