Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am 50 and use StackOverflow all the time. In my view StackOverflow (and Wikipedia) is one of the best things coming from the internet.
Did you fill out the survey?
Of course not :-), What survey?
Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
61–70 of 270 posts
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#62What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" Would anyone think it odd for a 60-year-old physician to still be doctoring, or a 60-year-old lawyer to still practice law. Or for that matter for a 60-year-old artist or craftsperson to "still" pursue their craft.
Corporate culture embraces the notion of management as a profession. I think programming would benefit greatly from more of a tradecraft model, where leadership is provided by the master practitioner rather than the professional manager. In the alternate universe that's how we do it. The bottom line productivity boost is awesome. I don't know if it scales, but I don't care to scale.
-- 63-year-old full-stack web and machine learning programmer...living the dream
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#63"StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?" Not wasting time filling out online surveys? I'm not even 40 yet and I realised online surveys were a waste of time years ago. :-) A stackoverflow survey doesn't measure the answers of stackoverflow users. It measures the answers from the specific demographic of stackoverflow users who are inclined to ans…
I'm 46, been coding for 3 (three) years, use StackOverflow several times a week, never answered one of their surveys.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#64I expect one contributing factor to this statistic is the proliferation of software development over the past decade. As millennials get older, so too will this generation of coders and hackers. The mid-twenties image "software engineer" conjures, will keep getting older. I'm fascinated to see how this will make software engineering a less sexy job / will change tech culture among deveopers
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#65Keep in mind that the industry is aging as a whole (and hopefully maturing in the process). So if you ask the question 10 years later, there will be a lot more developers in the 40+, 50+, 60+ buckets than today.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#66"StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?" Not wasting time filling out online surveys? I'm not even 40 yet and I realised online surveys were a waste of time years ago. :-) A stackoverflow survey doesn't measure the answers of stackoverflow users. It measures the answers from the specific demographic of stackoverflow users who are inclined to ans…
There is still some truth to it. I'm 37 and have had to repeatedly and forcefully turn down managerial roles. The idea of horizontal growth is a hard sell to people who've chosen the vertical path. It would be very easy to drift into a management role, and in fact it happened to me once and I had to take deliberate action to get off the management track. I don't want to manage people. I want to build, and learn about…
I'm 10 years older than you but feel the same way.
I would be interested in hearing from people that did make the jump to management. Why did you do it? How did it turn out? Any regrets about making the jump or for not making the jump sooner?
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#67I'm 42, programming is the fun part of the job (meetings, nonsensical time estimates and travel tend to be worst part of the job). Had a computer my whole life (Vic-20, oh yeah!) I strongly agree with what others have said in the article: Keep learning new things. I did nothing but C++ for 13 years (console games) and felt like a dinosaur. Despite the fact that there are still (a few) C++ jobs out there, I made a poi…
> One concern I have is that my hair is starting to turn grey so I think the HR process will get a bit trickier (planning on moving to more remote work so they can't see the grey :) I'm thinking of dyeing hair before interviews when I face the same problem.
I don't think you want to work in a place where they care about such things.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#68For anybody who attending a community college or University for technical courses, you would have realized that overwhelming majority of your Professors (aka computer scientists) are 40+ with a large chunk being 55+
I think human beings have infinite capacity to grow intelligent - that is until our bodies start shutting down (e.g. Alzheimer) but nobody knows at what age that happens (it can happen when a person is in their 20s or 80s or may never happen until one day the person simply stops breathing).
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#6950 and coding. There's nothing more satisfactory that carefully crafted code. Or maybe just releasing something and mostly never looking back because it. just. works.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#70I turn 50 this year. Learning clojure and competing on Kaggle. :-) Just completed a Machine Learning Engineer nanodegree on Udacity.