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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

#261

Post by tyingq »

duderific wrote: post #250
tyingq wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a 48 year old developer with a lot of gray hair...I've never seen anyone with dyed hair where it wasn't pretty obvious. To me it makes you seem a bit desperate.

That's the thing though, if it was done well, you didn't see it. Ask a few women, that already trust you, if they dye their gray... especially the ones you think don't.

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

#262

Post by timje1 »

defined wrote: post #227
to_bpr wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't get away with demanding the same work conditions or work/life balance from an older person than you can from a 21 year old CS graduate who's very eager to impress and has little other commitments to attend to. I can't imagine you'll find many older, experienced devs willing to put up with the "we need to ship so you've got to put in 80 hours this week. You build it, you support it so keep your phone an…

> I can't imagine you'll find many older, experienced devs willing to put up with the "we need to ship so you've got to put in 80 hours this week. Yes, because we've fallen for that bullshit before, killed ourselves to meet the deadline, and found that the asshole manager made it artificially short to "motivate" us, and the other teams aren't even finished yet :)

Ha, this happened to me a couple of weeks ago!

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

#263

Post by numinary1 »

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?"

It's a thing, isn't it? I mean, as words and phrases go, it at least means something, like not just front-end, back-end, or client-side view-model reducer mapping specialist. AI is much close to fully content-free.

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

#264

Post by intrasight »

midhunsezhi wrote: post #201
intrasight wrote: post #194

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.

> Programming and exercise are two of the three best ways to stay young. What in your opinion is the third one? (Starting curious?).

Sex

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

#265

Post by rhizome »

talmand wrote: post #245
djhworld wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The management track seems unsustainable anyway if the projected career path is seen as Developer -> Manager with no alternative, unless you just keep adding layers of management.

My manager is over three teams. Each team has around ten developers. We all can't be promoted to manager "if" he leaves.

Why a "Lead" will often come from another company.

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

#266

Post by rhizome »

ams6110 wrote: post #204
humanrebar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you do this? Give half-order-of-magnitude estimates as confidence intervals. Avoid using "hours" or "days" as estimates. Story points work really well here. Be extra clear on priorities and burndowns to make it clear that you're not just blowing them off. Give short but frequent demos (not just reports) of progress. If later they're concerned about progress, you can point back to all the times you reviewed t…

> Give half-order-of-magnitude estimates My current boss likes to ask "is it a day, a week, a month, or a year" and while sometimes I just want to say "yes, it's one of those" I actually think that's a pretty reasonable way to ask the question.

I heard a saying once, "Deadlines slip by the units they're measured in." If you say three weeks, it will slip by weeks, not days or months. If the estimate is months, etc.

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

#267

Post by crdoconnor »

vram22 wrote: post #249
crdoconnor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management seems peculiarly impervious to almost all of Fred Brooks' ideas: mythical man month, second system effect and the toolsmith especially.

I've read his Mythical Man Month book, including parts of the anniversary / silver jubilee edition, but it's been a while. A couple of questions: - Was the toolsmith idea about some people in the team building tools, that others in the team use for the project? - and if so, what was the benefit cited - specialization? - What was the second system effect about? I know I can google, but interested to read your take on…

"Was the toolsmith idea about some people in the team building tools, that others in the team use for the project? - and if so, what was the benefit cited - specialization?"

Yep. The benefit is efficiency. However, modern SCRUM advocates simply advocate grinding away at stories.

"What was the second system effect about?"

The glittering new rewrite of an existing system is usually overengineered and worse. Seen it several times.

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

#268

Post by vram22 »

crdoconnor wrote: post #267
vram22 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read his Mythical Man Month book, including parts of the anniversary / silver jubilee edition, but it's been a while. A couple of questions: - Was the toolsmith idea about some people in the team building tools, that others in the team use for the project? - and if so, what was the benefit cited - specialization? - What was the second system effect about? I know I can google, but interested to read your take on…

"Was the toolsmith idea about some people in the team building tools, that others in the team use for the project? - and if so, what was the benefit cited - specialization?" Yep. The benefit is efficiency. However, modern SCRUM advocates simply advocate grinding away at stories. "What was the second system effect about?" The glittering new rewrite of an existing system is usually overengineered and worse. Seen it sev…

Interesting about the 2nd point, thanks. Might make for interesting reading if there are any articles about that. Intuitively, I would have thought that a second system (rewrite of the first) may be better due to lessons learned.

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

#269

Post by vram22 »

vram22 wrote: post #268
crdoconnor wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Was the toolsmith idea about some people in the team building tools, that others in the team use for the project? - and if so, what was the benefit cited - specialization?" Yep. The benefit is efficiency. However, modern SCRUM advocates simply advocate grinding away at stories. "What was the second system effect about?" The glittering new rewrite of an existing system is usually overengineered and worse. Seen it sev…

Interesting about the 2nd point, thanks. Might make for interesting reading if there are any articles about that. Intuitively, I would have thought that a second system (rewrite of the first) may be better due to lessons learned.

>Intuitively, I would have thought that a second system (rewrite of the first) may be better due to lessons learned.

And at least in one case, it was: in a C database middleware product that I worked on, as the team leader. It did work earlier but had big issues of bugs, slowness, memory leaks, and maintainability. There were many reasons for that, including complete freshers put to work in it (a mistake). After me and a small new team took over, we improved it a lot and fixed all those issues. It went on to become a much more successful product, deployed somewhat widely within the company, for client projects ...

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

#270

Post by kapsoft »

defined wrote: post #224
numinary1 wrote: post #62

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…

> What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" What's up is the rampant ageism in the industry - the perception that you are washed up as a "dinosaur" developer after a certain age, maybe 40 or so, and belong in management. We "dinosaurs" - we happy few - are living evidence to the contrary. -- 58 year old broad-spectrum software guy, hard at work and loving it

61 and right there beside you brother!
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