251–260 of 270 posts
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> 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.
I'm betting the older devs (like myself) are the ones who have had that innate logic skill since they were born.
Everyone else moved on to management.
Just a theory.
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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...
BTW it's amazing this "virtual gathering" happening online in 2017. who could have been thinking, 30 years ago, this to be possible this way, so smoothly.. can't imagine where we are headed in the next 30..
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 th…
What'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 leaders…
There is a notion that the next step should be to not do any programming and be a manager. All that does is ensure you have extra layers. I have respect as a manager because I'm still current and more skilled technically than my team. If I leave my craft my skills will decline and I wont be able to help my team accelerate in skillset. You're a better manager if you're also a subject matter expert.
You should move out of low value programming but I don't think giving it up is good.
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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…
Younger devs have it made in that regard. And the amount of tutorials and quality are amazing these days. They do have a lot more technologies to learn though.
What'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 leaders…
Honestly, I'd rather be led by a "dinosaur" programmer than some marketing or MBA geek any day. At least then I know that my boss would go to bat for me when it's clear something is achievable within the capacities of the team or department. I've worked for too many clowns that think computers are magic boxes where you just whisper a few words into then you get a fully fleshed out platform out of it. Seriously, it sh…
I'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.
".. 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.…