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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

#191

Post by epalmer »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #185
epalmer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 63 and started coding FORTRAN in High School on a GE teletype. Did just a little coding. Went to college and took a FORTRAN class and a PL1 class. I loved PL1. All my undergraduate coding was with punch cards. IBM 360/50. Im graduate school for engineering I coded just FORTRAN with punch card images but on a terminal. So that was 1000 times better than physical cards. IBM 3090. Then Apple II, IBM PC, IBM PC-XT, I…

Punch card images?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

In a character cell terminal editor we would create data files with one line per card image. In essence a punch card for fortran as each line. This is not much different than what we do today. Today we create a line for each line of code (or comments). It was just that punch cards required specific columns for code and other controlling characters.

With physical cards you would carry boxes of card around. If the cards got dropped you were hosed unless the cards were numbers. We had columns for numbering the cards. But when writing a program from scratch you could not number the cards till the program ran correctly. Much fun!

Edit: added details

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

#192

Post by mythrwy »

lutusp wrote: post #144
aventuri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Lutus, you a mith of my Apple ][ times. cant believe (and SO happy..) you online!! IIRC you were programming in a bungalow out of nowhere at that time.. right? me, 50 yo, still coding embedded sw..

> IIRC you were programming in a bungalow out of nowhere at that time.. right? Yep, that be me: http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...

That's the best thing I've read all week!

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

#193

Post by 52-6F-62 »

Berobero wrote: post #177
krapp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the awkward position of having only gotten a CS degree and taken programming seriously after 30, so I suppose I'm the worst of both worlds. Of course, I also started going gray at 30, so...

I just graduated with a CS degree at 36; have an offer and will start soon. The age aspect is scary, but I've honestly found it less of an issue than I thought. The most difficult part is pushing past the part of me that says I'm too old to be starting now.

I'm currently working as a developer and aiming to go back to school within the next year or two for physics, after some catch-up math courses. Good for you for even setting out. It's intimidating, if not down-right frightening to start all over again at something.

But hell, the unconventional is increasingly becoming the conventional. Some of the best advice I ever received was from a doctor I had when I was young. He was an old Jamaican man who went from the slums of Kingston to Chemical Engineering in the US to a practicing MD (physician, general practitioner) in a small town in Canada. He just said (kind of what you'd expect from a Jamaican man): not to worry about anything.

Just do things, make messes, clean them up, do more things. You just might do some good in the process.

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

#194

Post by intrasight »

My goal is to be the last programmer standing who started on IBM punch cards ;)

By the way, I was at an Azure Bootcamp on Saturday (great event!) and there was a 70+ year old there with his laptop doing the labs.

Programming and exercise are two of the three best ways to stay young.

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

#196

Post by mlvljr »

cyberferret wrote: post #168
justin66 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

...with wannabe youthster DBAs :)

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

#197

Post by tluyben2 »

I am early 40s and have been coding professionally for 25 years; I will never stop doing it as I like it and it keeps me up to date with my colleagues/employees so I can help them and support them where needed. I spend a lot less time worrying about frameworks, programming languages etc then I used to. I practically deliver things my companies need. In my spare time I program as well; working on formal verification, development tools & games. For me it is just creating something from nothing that drew me into programming the around 34 years ago and I have not found anything that works that powerful on me.

I notice, with every year passing, that I need less and less time actually behind my computer and typing to write more and better software. Which is great as I don't like the typing part all too much :)

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

#198

Post by tyingq »

duderific wrote: post #67
taway_1212 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not all bias is conscious, or intentional. The hair dye may not be a bad idea, just temporarily, during the search. Get a pro though, obvious shoe polish color is, er, obvious.

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

#199

Post by Joof »

VLM wrote: post #111
peapicker wrote: post #2

".. However, StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?" Obviously not on StackOverflow. Perhaps they have enough experience and knowledge to not need the site because they either know how to read tech books and sites to get the info they need when they have a problem using pre-existing docs, or conversely, are fully able to debug issues themselves.…

I grew up in an era where if I somehow forgot the option for recursive for the rm command I reflexively typed "man rm" and "/recursive" and maybe "/" a couple times. It seems younger people will context switch from the console to the web browser, pull up a google window, search for "unix.stackexchange rm recurse" and slowly scroll thru "About 43,700 results (0.97 seconds)" for perhaps hours, opening multiple tabs. Pe…

I do this, but I googled it first to know that the recursive option actually exists and what it is called. Those man pages are decent references, but are usually useless for actually learning the tool.

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

#200

Post by to_bpr »

Berobero wrote: post #177
krapp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the awkward position of having only gotten a CS degree and taken programming seriously after 30, so I suppose I'm the worst of both worlds. Of course, I also started going gray at 30, so...

I just graduated with a CS degree at 36; have an offer and will start soon. The age aspect is scary, but I've honestly found it less of an issue than I thought. The most difficult part is pushing past the part of me that says I'm too old to be starting now.

I graduated CS at the age of 27 and thought I'd be at a disadvantage starting out in the industry due to it. If anything the couple more years seems to have helped me out quite a bit as I found it made me more relatable to the more senior technical people and management.

In the modern dev shops now the soft skills you've developed in the additional years you've had before getting into development will give you quite an advantage since 99% of places aren't just heads down coding anymore.

Where I've found I have a disadvantage is in my non-work commitments and free time outside of work. The younger guys can spend their evenings and weekends working on side projects, going to hackathons or just learning something new, whereas I come home to the family and try to spend quality time with them, do my share of the work in the upkeep of the house, yard, etc.

We only get one shot at life so you're never too old for anything in terms of what you want to spend 40+ hours a week doing to finance your life.

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