31–40 of 165 posts
This appears to be an Ad for free code camp (not that there's anything wrong with that). Just ten years younger in a similar boat, I'm neither taking a boot camp, nor writing about my "CIS". To each their own. Learning is a life long activity. It shouldn't matter what one learns at any age.
Perhaps it really is an ad, but if it is real, I am impressed that the person thinks at 56, he has enough runway in life to make a serious contribution by coding :-)...I like that attitude.
bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down
I feel like this is a common fear in many disciplines. Clinical psychology PhD's thinking PsyD's reduce the quality/wages of their profession (this was a huge contention among psych professors during undergrad), MD's thinking expanded practice privileges for NP's or PA's reduce quality/wages of their profession (and related, anesthesiologists worrying that CRNA's and AA's reduce their wages), PhD-educated machine lea…
In my wife's case, a large tech company hired her as a junior developer, and she's been doing great. In an industry where it is fairly common for employees to leave after two or three years (if not sooner), I don't think any employer is overly concerned that they'll only get a handful of years out of an employee. They'll most likely get less than that out of a 20-year-old.
As long as you still have a working memory, you can learn anything at any age, I don't go along with this 'old-dog-can't-learn-new-tricks' thinking. Though obviously when you're younger it's markedly easier to pick up a new skill.
With coding, a single good programming book for about 30$ can get you a long way...
bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down
That's a very non-inclusive way of thinking, and it is hard to imagine that it benefits the community as a whole. What if you substituted developers, in this situation, for doctors?
At my age the main problem is that I read a lot in a computer screen and my eyes get tired. Recently I read in the last weak several books for learning Erlang and Elixir and one for refreshing ruby. Last month I learned java by doing several projects with netbeans. Initially I programmwd only with gedit and googling stack overflow. I was programming feom six pm to five am to help my son with a java project. Honestly…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
credentialism - the best way of inflating wages with artificial scarcity,
why is it artificial? Credentials are everywhere. You need credentials to be an account, a physician, a teacher, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, a (insert various iteration of crazy welding techniques) welder, a steel fabricator (AISC), a child services worker, heavy machinery operator, if you are an engineer and want to work for the public, you have to get licensed, and the list can go on and on. And I am reall…
Some of your other examples, like lawyers and dentists, however do seem artificial. There is no legal option to hire someone without credentials (at least in the jurisdictions I am close to), even when the buyer understands the risks and poses no external risk to others.
I don't know about this heavy machinery thing. As a farmer, all I need to drive my 30,000 lbs. (when dry) combine down the road is a standard automobile license, and nothing at all once I'm off the public roads. Nobody thinks twice about that. Even more curiously, I do not need any credentials to produce food that people willingly stick into their mouth! You'd think that would be orders of magnitude more worrisome than many of the other careers you pointed out – especially given the difficulty of tracing food origins as a consumer – yet nobody bats an eye.
This appears to be an Ad for free code camp (not that there's anything wrong with that). Just ten years younger in a similar boat, I'm neither taking a boot camp, nor writing about my "CIS". To each their own. Learning is a life long activity. It shouldn't matter what one learns at any age.
Maybe I'm having trouble parsing your comment, but it is not readily apparent if you're critical or in support of the post. Could you clarify your statement?
Especially our seasoned "best-agers"!! =)
For most, they're beaten, defeated. They decide this is all there is, and they're going to ride out their remaining years doing as little as possible other than wallowing in regret and yelling at kids to get off their damn lawn. It's sad and terrible. I can hardly bear to be around a lot of people who were so vital when they were young.
The others, though... they see the clock on the wall. They know that, at best, life is more than half over for them already. They have a limited amount of time. They're the ones ticking things off their bucket list. They understand their priorities. Now, you may not understand just how important it is to them to start a new business, or grow the perfect tomato, or travel through China, but they get it in a deep way, much deeper than most 20-somethings can imagine.
You really, really want to work with people like this if you can. They're brilliant.
bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down
I'm not sure that's true, other than the obvious issue of supply vs. demand, where wages are concerned. As for quality, I've worked with college-trained programmers who wrote awful code, and I've worked with self-taught programmers who wrote amazing code. Some of the best programmers I've ever worked with were self-taught.
I never attended a bootcamp, but I have mentored for Rails Girls, Girl Develop It, and a bootcamp or two. In my experience, bootcamps are good places to learn how to write certain types of code. They don't help much in the way of theory, algorithms, or other low-level details, but for teaching people how to write typical business applications, they are a pretty good place to start, I think.
I also think bootcamps are good at weeding out those with no aptitude or desire for programming. My wife attended a bootcamp, and there were two types of people who attended with her. Those who took the task seriously, studied the materials, read the books, and practiced, practiced, practiced, and those who thought that paying the $5,000 to $10,000 was all the effort they had to apply, and that someone else would magically load their minds with the requisite information, once they had achieved that monetary apex. The first types got jobs. The latter types did not.