21–30 of 440 posts
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…
edit: just saying limits seem artificial, that's all
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.
> Learn faster (better memory)
Younger and quicker developers took a lot longer over it and to find their feet because there were many new concepts there for them.
As you get older, there's less to you haven't already learned.
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 could go on and on about the stuff I'd do I don't do anymore.
It's not that those things don't have their place, or that all young programmers are guilty of premature optimizations, but there's no difference in terms of productivity between doing nothing and doing things that don't matter at all. It took me a while to learn that, and I still catch myself wasting time.
I'm 43 and have been doing professional development for 20 years (actually 20 years). I moved permanently to Saigon just 1.5 months ago. I'm teaching the Pivotal software engineering process (agile / extreme) to a 100 person consultancy full of really smart ~20 year olds who didn't know or understand process at all.
I keep up on all the latest tech and I have a youthful mind and body (most people think I'm in my 30's). I'm the oldest guy in the company and the only American here. This has quickly lead to a lot of personal mentoring on many levels, not just software, but life in general. The culture in Vietnam is strong and my team wants to learn from me. It is very exciting and new for all of us. It has been an amazing experience so far and I look forward to the future.
The best additional advice? Just be nice. It is so simple. The culture here is to never raise your voice or get mad in public, so I've taken it to the other extreme and I just smile and laugh a lot. Even when the servers are melting down. Viet are shy and have poor personal communication skills. By being friendly and nice, they have learned to trust me and that has opened up them up a lot. It has infected my entire team and improved moral almost over night.
Being older has a lot of advantages. I'm loving my 40's way more than my 20's. Cheers! =)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My thoughts: "Current tech trends in terms of UI" are generally antithetical to usability. Speed is an important aspect of usability, and web sites and mobile apps are as slow and unresponsive as they've ever been. Like security, performance is a holistic concern; it cuts across layers abstraction (your "stack"). Because even good software is so layered these days, a younger programmer is less likely to have visited…
> Speed is an important aspect of usability. Agreed. But I couldn't bring myself to get past the ugly UI and get to performance testing, bundling / minifications, async calls etc.
Elon Musk is 45. Does that make him old? Doesn't seem to slow him down. edit: just saying limits seem artificial, that's all
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Speed is an important aspect of usability. Agreed. But I couldn't bring myself to get past the ugly UI and get to performance testing, bundling / minifications, async calls etc.
Well the site (kettlerusa.com) has crashed now...
> 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.
Can you provide an example?
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.