Very inspiring, this is her website: http://marchan.travel.coocan.jp
Also previous discussion and video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14995333
82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
41–50 of 222 posts
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#42twice I have worked with colleagues in Japan on non-trivial things.. patience, skill and conflict-averse were my direct experience.. regarding the age topic.. it is rampant in the Bay Area, and in my opinion is a flimsy mask over an even greater list of ugly management practices
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#43I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found m…
I think that openness and confidence are major factors. Having taught older adults to use computers, one of the major difficulties is getting them past the fear that they might "break" the computer and the need to memorise rote instructions rather than experiment with the interface.
The body language is quite distinctive - tentatively pressing keys with an outstretched index finger as if the keyboard might jump up and bite them, pushing around the mouse with their fingertips rather than grasping it with their whole hand, leaning away from the screen as if it might explode in their face.
Some older people just can't internalise the idea of looking at the screen for clues as to how to proceed. No matter how many times they're told and shown, they just don't get the idea that computing is interactive. They try to memorise every interaction as a series of rote steps, so if something unexpected happens they're completely lost. They are completely incapable of navigating a UI without very explicit instruction, even if it's broadly similar to UIs they know how to navigate. Something as trivial as accidentally scrolling down a few lines on a website is a complete showstopper. I don't understand it, but I find it endlessly fascinating.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#44I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found m…
I wonder the same thing trying to learn a new language. I notice the biggest difference between me and a child is that children don't care about messing up. Meanwhile I often have this worthless apprehension of "better not practice Spanish on these Spanish speakers, I might mess up and feel stupid." I tried to learn Spanish like I learned how to program. Now I'm living proof that you can become good enough to read bo…
> I notice the biggest difference between me and a child is that children don't care about messing up.
A physiological difference you wouldn't have noticed are that children will be making more neural connections than adults at that stage of their development.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#45I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found m…
Coming from the chess world, I suspect your hypothesis is correct. I've taught adults and children and all else being equal adults learn and improve vastly faster than children. But the all else being equal part is the catch. Adults often don't put as much effort into the work as children and a big problem is preconceptions that people have difficulty letting go of. I also consider myself some slight degree of proof…
Teaching beginners? Sure, most little kids are immature and don't understand the big picture concepts of general strategy that adults already learned before they started studying chess. And adult many likely already had some chess experience.
But Progressing through to expert or world-class? History verifies the conventional wisdom that ages ~12-30 show the greatest gains.
And when you look over to things like language and music, the difference in learning ability is vast. Kids can become trilingual effortlessly, while adults almost never get close.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#46I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found m…
And how much of attitude is based on the genetics/physical state of the brain?
So many people can be taught that a growth mindset is all you really need to continue to improve at a skill, yet the distributions are still bell curves and people still plateau where they are at.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#47Another great example where an open mind of any age will learn new things. My neighbour is in her 90's always seems to relish the challenge of learning new things, and it does seem to keep her brain sharp.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#48Since I posted it I feel compelled to add: its irrelevant that this person was a woman of Japanese decent. We all know gender and nationality is irrelevant when it comes to skill of coding, but I wanted to keep it intact in the title as the article goes. As of her age, I do think its quite unique skills to be so laser-focused at something as tedious as coding, even more in CamelType structured language as Apple force…
She's a Japanese person making a Japanese app about a Japanese cultural topic.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#49I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found m…
I wonder the same thing trying to learn a new language. I notice the biggest difference between me and a child is that children don't care about messing up. Meanwhile I often have this worthless apprehension of "better not practice Spanish on these Spanish speakers, I might mess up and feel stupid." I tried to learn Spanish like I learned how to program. Now I'm living proof that you can become good enough to read bo…
It's a different skill but I'm learning piano as an adult. I have a digital piano and headphones, and it's great — nobody like neighbors, roomates or people outside on the street hears so I can play around and learn without problem.
We can't really do the same with languages, but it's interesting! I definitely feel how I tense up if I have to practice openly.
Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
#50I always found it funny, the idea that age or agism should in any way stop you from achieving cool shit in business. Entrepreneurship is a jungle. Your customers, largely speaking, doesn't know your age or gender or whether or not you went to an ivy league school or anything else. Some career directions certainly do depend on that stuff, but that's mostly because they depend on other people for advancement. But build…
What are some examples of successful businesses that launched and operate without person-to-person contact and negotiations? Purely automated online operations conceal identities, sure, but investors usually know who the entrepreneurs, and major clients and vendors and joint-venture partners do too.
Lots of SaaS companies were entirely bootstrapped and rely primarily or wholly on low-touch B2C or B2SME sales - most of the speakers and attendees at MicroConf would fall into this camp.