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Learning to code at 56

medium.freecodecamp.com

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Re: Learning to code at 56

#161

Post by cholantesh »

gravypod wrote: post #6
mfukar wrote: post #4

bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down

I don't think bootcamps turn out lower quality developers and I don't think they will drive wages down. Currently they are web focused but I think the bootcamp style is far better at teaching programming/computer information then the current university enviroment. We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/…

>We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP).

Most of those fields seem pretty advanced (can't speak for DSP or trading, but realtime and embedded software both seem fairly intimidating to me). Do you feel that someone totally green to software would be able to ramp up in the time advertised by the average bootcamp (2-3 months)?

Re: Learning to code at 56

#162

Post by beat »

greenhatman wrote: post #158
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I really enjoy about being 51 is being able to understand both extremes you describe -- as well as being able to understand and remember what many other segments of life was like. It gives you quite a broad view! At times it feels like standing on a mountain and seeing a vast landscape that you've crossed to get here -- and the mountain path ahead that leads to new heights. There's also the joy of playing to typ…

>I have no doubt that skills and abilities decrease with age. I wonder if this will just be true for your generation. Because of computers and the programming industry only really taking off when you were already a few years into your career. I can imagine that someone who started their career with programming early and just continues with it might just keep widening the gap between them and newcomers. Which might on…

At my second serious job in the late '90s, my manager was the programmer who wrote the linker for Cray unix when he was there. Great programmer. Now I'm the old guy who intimidates they young'ns.

Being a good programmer has very little to do with following current trends in tools. Tools can be learned, especially if they don't require a fundamental shift in thinking.

I've lived through a project of watching lifer COBOL programmers involved in transitioning their systems to Java. Some simply couldn't learn Java at all, it was such an alien way of thinking. Some of them quit or retired, some became analysts for the project, because they understood the business that was encoded in those bazillion lines of twenty year old COBOL. Now I'm starting to see a generation of early Java legacy apps rewritten in Node or whatever. What goes around...

Re: Learning to code at 56

#164

Post by eggman »

Regarding a quote from Dan Bunten "No developer, on their deathbed, hopes for more time alone at a computer screen". Perhaps a quote from an expert, or perhaps not, either way this quote resonates with me. I have some contempt for "certified experts" anyway. The carrot at the end of the obstacle course is this: helping people become better may exponentially increase your reward while tinkering in front of a screen is risky business.

Re: Learning to code at 56

#165

Post by eggman »

learn arabic, learn japanese, learn chemistry. "coding" is dense and every craft has its skilled practitioners. will anyone read your code in two hundred years?
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