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Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

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Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#161

Post by gaza3g »

gjmacd wrote: post #143

I'm 52, started writing code professionally in 1985. Started my career on 68K assembler. In the 90's I was a Windows SDK developer (then COM/ATL, etc.), In 1999 started a company but chose Linux and embraced FOSS and built a company on a Lamp stack (sold it in 2014). The only thing that can hurt you in this industry is that you stop learning and stop growing. I tell my employees to always learn something new every mo…

Can you tell us a bit more about 'taking 3-6 months off' to learn new things. I'm thinking about doing that myself.

Did you take a sabbatical? Is your current company ok with this? What did you work on?

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#162

Post by psyc »

cyrux004 wrote: post #121
svachalek wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3-5X? What country is this? Typically in Silicon Valley there's a rapid rise in the first 5-7 years and then it gets pretty flat (say, 1.1X or 1.2X not 2-3X) unless you're actually taking on a bigger role (and thus getting paid for those responsibilities rather than "experience" per se). When you look at it from a company cost perspective, the ratios get even smaller. The fixed costs (desk, power, healthcare, etc) ar…

At Microsoft, annual compensation for entry level hire is around 130k (W2 box #2) where as for the principal engineer that figure is atleast 350k

Jesus. When I started in '06, my total comp was 82k. My last year, 2010, my total comp was $115k. I managed to be both too late and too early to that party.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#163

Post by metaobject »

godmodus wrote: post #124
justin66 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone with 20 years experience refer to themselves as a "full-stack developer?"

Full stack is just new age lingo, and sure why not. We say AI (shudder) these days instead of ML, we say devops instead of sysadmin, we say cloud instead of vps/hosting. Times change and so does language, true to any old fart out there, and the old farts to be.

"We say AI (shudder) these days instead of ML"

I thought it was the other way around. With ML taking a more statistical approach to traditional AI problems.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#164

Post by gjmacd »

symmitchry wrote: post #17

The idea that 40 is "old" is hilarious to me.

Agree. Especially with startups. I have to say, I'd been to a bunch of local Meetups and have bent the age curve at them. Looking around going, "wow, these could all be my kids...". And most of them are good programmers but terrible at decision making.

My only problem with "today's young programmer" is really the lack of experience to know enough to "see this movie before". I've seen a lot of mistakes in companies that I've been at and worked at only to go "Umm... yeah, don't do that..." -- only to see them make the mistake because they haven't had enough time or experience it. It's like watching my kids touch the hot stove for the first time.

But the industry loves "young". Don't they?

When funding comes for a startup, it appears VC's are willing to dump the money on the 24 year old with a pitch deck that excites them... it's amazing.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#165

Post by ishbits »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #74

45. Still coding, probably until I die. Light years ahead of younger developers in the following: * Writing less code * Writing maintainable code * Re-using existing code (requires reading existing code) * Know how APIs should be written * Knowing how to properly map associations * Know when or when not to use another library * Knowing when to tell a product manager to go back and do some more product managing * Know…

One thing I do way less in my 40s is over engineer a solution, or worry about all possible someday maybe use cases of a class many Java developers seem to like to design for.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#166

Post by Clubber »

pg314 wrote: post #93
cyrux004 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you justify the 3-5x difference in annual compensation that younger developer makes can you justify the 2-3x difference between you and a guy who was been coding for 5-7 years ?

Yes and yes. If I compare myself against when I just started, I'm easily 10x more valuable now (in some cases 100x). And I would still choose my current self over 5 copies of myself at 5-7 years of experience. Maybe if you have a simple problem, like a CRUD application or a simple website, it wouldn't matter much. But for harder problems there is no contest.

This. Most development is CRUD and is trivial. Write a DSS and/or automation system that is bulletproof and saves millions and it's significantly more difficult. The difference between using something like Biztalk and writing something like Biztalk is orders of magnitude more difficult.

If you are using someone else's framework for the majority of what your application does, that's not really software development. I know many people won't like hearing that.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#167

Post by psyc »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #74

45. Still coding, probably until I die. Light years ahead of younger developers in the following: * Writing less code * Writing maintainable code * Re-using existing code (requires reading existing code) * Know how APIs should be written * Knowing how to properly map associations * Know when or when not to use another library * Knowing when to tell a product manager to go back and do some more product managing * Know…

I feel similarly as far as being on a whole other level now. I'm 40 and semi-retired. I spend far more time coding per day than I did at the peak of my career in the industry. And compared to myself back then... I don't even know how to make the comparison. The concepts and systems I play with every day now wouldn't have been anywhere in sight for me then.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#168

Post by cyberferret »

justin66 wrote: post #120
cryptonector wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason graybeards are valuable. It's not that they're over 50 or 60. It's experience. A full-stack developer with 20 years' worth of experience will not make certain kinds of mistakes.

Does anyone with 20 years experience refer to themselves as a "full-stack developer?"

By default, most programmers from two decades ago ARE full stack developers.

Back then, there was no separation of front end, back end or database - it was all melded into one, so if I wanted to write an app, I would have to learn the language, figure out how to display the data and collect user input from the screen, write the data tables and the code to update it etc. etc.

There was no question of learning SQL or raw file system I/O to manipulate data - there was no ORM or framework to fall back on. Until Windows came along, there was no standard on UI or UX principles. It was all 'build it as you go'.

Some of those older habits die hard. Though I use ORMs almost all the time now, I still find myself experimenting with queries in raw SQL before translating them to my ORM of choice. I still have a hard time separating my front end code, or the design elements thereof, for someone else to do, because I am so used to doing it myself.

Somehow, I still feel the need for ownership of all aspects of my application stack, and will often spend an inordinate amount of time learning about something that I am not familiar with. As I said before, Old habits die hard.

So, while I don't often refer to myself as a 'full stack developer', I do routinely say that I 'do it all, including making the coffee and sweeping the floor in the server room'.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#169

Post by psyc »

sotojuan wrote: post #25
symmitchry wrote: post #17

The idea that 40 is "old" is hilarious to me.

This is the same industry that calls people in their late 20s "senior".

I got my first "senior software engineer" title at the wizened age of 22! I'm not kidding, but it is hilarious.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#170

Post by fencepost »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #32

"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 48 and working on shifting back into coding after too much time doing more generalized IT consulting/support/admin/etc. for medical practices, and I'm not nearly as likely to spend time on Stack Overflow as I was 6-7 years ago.

There's still useful stuff on there and some gems, but it feels like there's a lot more cruft to wade through as well and I'm not feeling the same desire to surf the site or look for questions to answer because that's just not as personally rewarding as it once was.

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