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On Getting Older in Tech

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Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#11

Post by Clubber »

sean_patel wrote: post #2

> Want an example where the programmer codes in something other than “antiquated” RPG? How about HTML5, JavaScript, and C#? With all due respect, Sir -- and I understand I will be in your shoes in 4 decades -- the site you've built, using HTML5, JS, Grails, Groovy and what not I presume - kettlerusa.com - has the look and feel of a 90s website (think the whitehouse.gov * unders Bill & Gore's administration), esp. tha…

The site looks fine. I can easily pay $0-$10 to get a super nice HTML5 site that would look great because it was made by a professional designer, then tweak it a little to make it look somewhat unique in a 10th of the time. Eye candy sells, but it is cheap. Most people would be better suited concentrating on back end abilities; it's generally a much more valuable skill set.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#12

Post by rmason »

GuiA wrote: post #4
sean_patel wrote: post #2

> Want an example where the programmer codes in something other than “antiquated” RPG? How about HTML5, JavaScript, and C#? With all due respect, Sir -- and I understand I will be in your shoes in 4 decades -- the site you've built, using HTML5, JS, Grails, Groovy and what not I presume - kettlerusa.com - has the look and feel of a 90s website (think the whitehouse.gov * unders Bill & Gore's administration), esp. tha…

There is no truth to what Zuckerberg said - the guy has said many idiotic things in his life, and this one ranks near the top. You're picking the author's website as an example, but it's a single datapoint - not representative of anything. Many younger people code much worse things, and many older people code much better things. I'm slowly reaching 30 (agh), and I refuse to work in any team that doesn't have any memb…

If I was to meet Zuckerberg I'd quiz him on that quote and ask him, did you A/B test that? If he did boy would he be in for a surprise ;<).

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#14

Post by JTenerife »

Younger people are not smarter. They might learn faster new things. On the other hand, older people understand related new things much better as they already have a large context (experience). The biggest difference of my current self (44) to my younger self is that I did spend much more energy in my projects when I was younger. I created results much faster at the cost of limited consideration. Now, I can still burn for a while, but not as long as when I was younger.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#15

Post by dantaylor08 »

johnwheeler wrote: post #13

It makes sense to plug https://oldgeekjobs.com I've taken a small break from working on it, so the traffic has died down some, but feel free to post your tech jobs for free for the time being.

If you're looking for help, drop me a line. As a young(er) engineer, I live in terror every day of what may come down the road.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#16

Post by cft »

JTenerife wrote: post #14

Younger people are not smarter. They might learn faster new things. On the other hand, older people understand related new things much better as they already have a large context (experience). The biggest difference of my current self (44) to my younger self is that I did spend much more energy in my projects when I was younger. I created results much faster at the cost of limited consideration. Now, I can still burn…

Young people:

    1. Learn faster (better memory)

    2. Can keep their attention focused longer.
Number 1 actually becomes a bane with old people: my relatives over 70 actively developed an active reticence to learn anything new: I even theorized that they are instinctively protecting the limited amount of functional short term memory for vital tasks.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#17

Post by dang »

sean_patel wrote: post #2

> Want an example where the programmer codes in something other than “antiquated” RPG? How about HTML5, JavaScript, and C#? With all due respect, Sir -- and I understand I will be in your shoes in 4 decades -- the site you've built, using HTML5, JS, Grails, Groovy and what not I presume - kettlerusa.com - has the look and feel of a 90s website (think the whitehouse.gov * unders Bill & Gore's administration), esp. tha…

I don't think we'd better start identifying look-and-feel of websites with programming skill.

One thing I've noticed whilst becoming older as a programmer is what pleasure I take in certain sorts of what people call "rookie" errors.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#18

Post by johnwheeler »

dantaylor08 wrote: post #15
johnwheeler wrote: post #13

It makes sense to plug https://oldgeekjobs.com I've taken a small break from working on it, so the traffic has died down some, but feel free to post your tech jobs for free for the time being.

If you're looking for help, drop me a line. As a young(er) engineer, I live in terror every day of what may come down the road.

That's kind of you Dan. Yep -- I remind myself that ageism is the one form of discrimination that eventually affects everyone. There might be more...I dunno, but it keeps me on mission.

I run a Medium publication at https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com. If you've got writing chops, I'm looking for contributors. That goes for anybody. Thanks again.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#19

Post by vacri »

JTenerife wrote: post #14

Younger people are not smarter. They might learn faster new things. On the other hand, older people understand related new things much better as they already have a large context (experience). The biggest difference of my current self (44) to my younger self is that I did spend much more energy in my projects when I was younger. I created results much faster at the cost of limited consideration. Now, I can still burn…

I find that - very broadly speaking - old guns are better at strategy and young guns are better at tactics. The energy and interest of the young lead them to find the local maxima more readily, and the experience of the old help you find the real maxima rather than the local. Or put another way, young'uns will get you out of the rabbit-hole more quickly, but old'uns will take you down fewer rabbit-holes. Both mindsets work well together.

YMMV, caveat, caveat, caveat, etc, roughly speaking, &c

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#20

Post by psranga »

sean_patel wrote: post #2

> Want an example where the programmer codes in something other than “antiquated” RPG? How about HTML5, JavaScript, and C#? With all due respect, Sir -- and I understand I will be in your shoes in 4 decades -- the site you've built, using HTML5, JS, Grails, Groovy and what not I presume - kettlerusa.com - has the look and feel of a 90s website (think the whitehouse.gov * unders Bill & Gore's administration), esp. tha…

Looks fine to me. Ikea's site looks similar (to my eyes at least), btw. And nothing like the 90's whitehouse site.

There's a lot of niche sites that get the job done without following all the latest "trends". More power to them.

Function over form FTW.

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