21–30 of 79 posts
But since not a single one has done so (at least publically), something else must be stopping them.
Ironically while arguing one side of the case he becomes an example supporting the other. He sounds so grumpy and closed minded. Who'd want to hire him? His thesis that technology hasn't changed is false in any case. E.g. while the fundamentals of algorithms haven't changed, that sort of knowledge is less central than it used to be; for better or worse, software development seems to be evolving into something where y…
The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment. I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership. Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper p…
Bear in mind that programming is still a relatively new field. There are simply more young programmers out there. We see ageism more because it's an option. You can start a startup consisting only of young people.
I predict that as the field matures, it will become less of an issue. Companies won't be able to ignore older programmers (or at least will be less able to ignore them) because there will be more of them.
I agree, many people undervalue other's experience. I think its a treasure trove of information as to what worked and what didn't work, especially if one can cross apply those lessons across knowledge domains/areas of technology.
I think one reason is that people of that age are mostly the ones who even remember various useful solutions to problems and tradeoffs that have come up in the past. CS is strangely bad at digitizing its history: I can get a philosophy journal issue from 1890 on Jstor, but many CS journals and proceedings from as recently as 1980 are still dead-tree only. And many are still relevant, e.g. the V8 js engine is strongly based on 1980s Smalltalk compiler research. A handful of important papers (say, by Turing) have been piecemeal scanned and put online by interested people, and a handful of university classes cover historical aspects, but overall I don't think history transmission is taken particularly seriously in CS circles. So, it ends up being more of a living-memory sort of deal, where if you want knowledge from the 1970s/80s to influence your designs, you have to hire people who personally remember it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, C is a language in which virtually everything is expressed using fixed-width integers, in which developers must choose and remember which region of memory every variable resides in, in which object lifetimes are of crucial import but left entirely to the devices of the programmer, and in which the programmer is addressing the hardware nearly directly, instead of an interpreter. And sure, Javascript is none of t…
Also, curly braces!
Its curly-brace behavior, however, is pretty much exactly like C.
Ironically while arguing one side of the case he becomes an example supporting the other. He sounds so grumpy and closed minded. Who'd want to hire him? His thesis that technology hasn't changed is false in any case. E.g. while the fundamentals of algorithms haven't changed, that sort of knowledge is less central than it used to be; for better or worse, software development seems to be evolving into something where y…
The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment. I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership. Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper p…
Because programming is concerned with "details", it was considered clerical work from the beginning. Look at the indignities suffered by Jean Bartik and the female staff that were assigned to program ENIAC. Do you think they would have assigned women at the time if they had any idea of the intellectual challenge of programming?
Since programming is considered low level work, it's always been a smart move for programmers to find their way out of it into management or whatever. Relying on the good will of employers has always been a dubious proposition (except maybe during the American post-war boom—a unique period in world history), so it stands to reason that most programmers would be looking to move up and out.
In most professions that have similar age barriers to early exit (sports comes to mind immediately) one case expect to be compensated handsomely for the short while that one has is holding on to the position, this is not the case with programming.
In the case of sports you have 10,000 people that aspire to every single paid position. If programming were that way, where vast swaths of people practiced daily from age 6-21 in the hope of snagging one of the glorious few spots, then you could expect pay to scale accordingly. As it is, I think the economics of being a startup founder are a bit closer to professional athlete.
Ironically while arguing one side of the case he becomes an example supporting the other. He sounds so grumpy and closed minded. Who'd want to hire him? His thesis that technology hasn't changed is false in any case. E.g. while the fundamentals of algorithms haven't changed, that sort of knowledge is less central than it used to be; for better or worse, software development seems to be evolving into something where y…
The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment. I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership. Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper p…
This is a lot simpler than it seems. Highly experienced, working programmers are rare because there were far fewer programmers twenty years ago compared to today. So of course they are now far outnumbered by newcomers.
This happens in any booming field, in fact any booming demographic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, curly braces!
Psst, the semicolon comment is funny because JavaScript doesn't actually require semicolons at the end of each line. It will automatically insert them for you if missing, which has led to a number of hard-to-find bugs. Its curly-brace behavior, however, is pretty much exactly like C.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment. I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership. Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper p…
The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak. Another factor is the rate of change in technology. Mere experience may be an obstacle there. When you start knowing nothing and pick a technology to learn, you naturally tend to pick the newest one. Whereas for an old person, learning new technologies is something you do out of duty as much as eagerness. An old person learning new techn…
However the argument can be made that we need experienced folks to evangelize what is good and productive in the current context and the more of them the merrier.
The in-ability or lack of desire to learn something new is a determent to the individual and should apply equally to all professions. It does not adequately answer the question, Given the choice of 2 programmer equally skilled in new technology X why is there a preference for the 21 yr old over the 45 yr old?
While the economic arguments (lack of family responsibility resulting in the ability to work long hours and lower cost including benefits and pay) apply in the case of start ups they do not address the industry as a whole.
Peaking at an would be an excellent reason, it implies that the experience gained from practice is not sufficiently relevant, which I cannot immediately judge and is possibly correct in the context of technology. I am inclined to think that it is more related to the inability of those responsible for hiring to realize ability outside of their own limitations.
I always thought that your essay on not being able to recognize a better programming language outside of the one you knew (forget the title), is more generally applicable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment. I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership. Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper p…
The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak. Another factor is the rate of change in technology. Mere experience may be an obstacle there. When you start knowing nothing and pick a technology to learn, you naturally tend to pick the newest one. Whereas for an old person, learning new technologies is something you do out of duty as much as eagerness. An old person learning new techn…
Ironically while arguing one side of the case he becomes an example supporting the other. He sounds so grumpy and closed minded. Who'd want to hire him? His thesis that technology hasn't changed is false in any case. E.g. while the fundamentals of algorithms haven't changed, that sort of knowledge is less central than it used to be; for better or worse, software development seems to be evolving into something where y…