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You're never too old to learn to code

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Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#21

Post by petra »

buserror wrote: post #13

While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of every "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc. Coding is a calling. You can learn anything if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best. Coding is not for everyone, it's…

>> you will end up being average at it, at best.

What's wrong with being average and making a living ? assuming of course there's place for average people in this field ? someone need to write those simple but boring CRUD.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#22

Post by sheeshkebab »

No one is too old to learn to code - in particular folks that deal with quantitative or logic skills in prior career (finance, lawyers, etc).

The issue typically is that it’s hard (for even existing programmers) maintain the focus to write code 8 hours a day 5 days a week, months on end, at any age, and so it often doesn’t work out.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#23

Post by andyjohnson0 »

buserror wrote: post #13

While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of every "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc. Coding is a calling. You can learn anything if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best. Coding is not for everyone, it's…

> Coding is a calling.

It might be for some, but for many I suspect it is a job. An interesting job, but a job nevertheless. Elevating what is essentially an economic activity to the level of a "calling" seems strange to me.

I've been developing software professionally for over 25 years. I think I'm reasonably good at it, although I'm no rockstar dev. I enjoy working with software and it scratches an intellectual itch, but I wouldn't say it makes me happy and I certainly don't see it as something I'm "called" to. I don't see this as an obstacle and I hope there continues to be plenty of room for people like me.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#24

Post by choonway »

buserror wrote: post #13

While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of every "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc. Coding is a calling. You can learn anything if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best. Coding is not for everyone, it's…

I went into a programming gig knowing next to nothing about PL/SQL, but was able to resolve one of their longstanding mystery bugs due to my experience in debugging in general. It came about having to defend my work that was written in C.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#25

Post by GrumpyNl »

some_account wrote: post #18
droidist2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) also has this view, and I think it's much more true than the "once you hit 40 you get forced out of engineering and into management" meme.

Older people have a hard time keeping up with young guns who sit on their spare time however. You usually have family, kids, less energy etc as a 40 year old. Experience is good but I've found that it's impossible to know new things as well as young people since you have a life outside work. According to jetbrains survey, 85% of developers work on weekends.

Dont forget the evenings and days of.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#26

Post by gaius »

dalbasal wrote: post #15
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #14

People in tech like to think that they are logically, even scientifically minded but the truth is we are all subject to cultural bias, just as much as the next person. This silly idea that computers are a young man's game is going to come back and bite a great many people in the behind in a few years, when they naturally age and find themselves over what they previously considered the age threshold for the job they s…

Also, the origins of this bias are fairly arbitrary. First, there is a real reason. Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such. That's balanced against older people being more experienced. It's particularly relevant in the software space, but the youthful exuberance VS experienced sobriety trade-off exists in all fields. Think of medicine, architecture, art... The bigg…

Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such

Citation very much needed. Because that sounds like pure ageism. Who invented all the devices young people love to consume media on...?

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#27

Post by Lio »

devhero wrote: post #4

Learning to code can be a daunting task at any age but entering a Coding Bootcamp where the average age range of the students is 18-25 can make an aspiring web developer who is older feel out of place. I attended a Coding Bootcamp at the age of 31, and while I am still technically considered a millennial (And I am super young at heart), even I have felt like there is a bias in tech/startup culture that leans towards…

> Don't wear a suit

I guess this varies from country to country but personally I think that's bad advice.

In my experience it's better to be over dressed than underdressed.

I'm in my 40s and have never worked anywhere that had a formal dress code, it's always been wear what you want unless you're talking to a customer. I pretty much expect most dev jobs to be jeans and t-shirts.

I'm a contractor now so do quite a few interviews and a suit to an interview is an easy choice.

You look like you give a shit when you turn up and you can make a joke with the interviewer about being overdressed to break the ice.

Much harder to do it the other way round.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#28

Post by gaius »

devhero wrote: post #4

Learning to code can be a daunting task at any age but entering a Coding Bootcamp where the average age range of the students is 18-25 can make an aspiring web developer who is older feel out of place. I attended a Coding Bootcamp at the age of 31, and while I am still technically considered a millennial (And I am super young at heart), even I have felt like there is a bias in tech/startup culture that leans towards…

creating a collection of side projects and demo applications. This is how your creativity can set you apart from the pack, regardless of your age. Let your website/portfolio show

Do your full time job, do unpaid overtime, then go home and code code code some more.

Fine advice from someone who has only just learned themselves...

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#29

Post by robertAngst »

petra wrote: post #21
buserror wrote: post #13

While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of every "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc. Coding is a calling. You can learn anything if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best. Coding is not for everyone, it's…

>> you will end up being average at it, at best. What's wrong with being average and making a living ? assuming of course there's place for average people in this field ? someone need to write those simple but boring CRUD.

Because then every time you ask for help, people tell you

"You should really have someone better than you doing this."

Try asking the internet a database or encryption question. Many times people wont even nudge you into a google search, they just shut the question down.

To program means learning advanced IMO. I have a hard time considering these 'software engineers' who have been doing Android Testing for 6 years 'programmers'.

On the flip side, you get some random 20 some year old kid with no formal training that builds the next gen blockchain.

You can do lots of stuff as an average programmer, but they cannot do anything alone.

Re: You're never too old to learn to code

#30

Post by Finnucane »

I'm in my 50s, but I'm learning to code, but I'm not exactly new to it. I just didn't do it for a long time and now it's a rather different world from doing Fortran on 110-baud Decwriters. I got into an electrical engineering program, but dropped out when I discovered that the number of times they let you fail differential equations is finite. I ended up with a career in publishing. No regrets, really, but now publishing like other businesses becomes increasingly high-tech (I remember editing with a red pencil and doing layouts with waxers and x-acto knives). I push xml files around and write xslt and xquery scripts. I wrote our code specs for our ebook program. Now I'm developing a python app to supplement the terrible proprietary inventory system we use.

I do not call myself an engineer.

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