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Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#161

Post by SonOfLilit »

pedrocx486 wrote: post #154
lerax wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Coding JS on keyboard is already bad enough.

It's a bit sad that people today still "fanboy" against a lang, like a lot of people still do for PHP (which has absolutely improved from the absurdity it was). JS followed the same path, ES2016 is an absolute dream to code on. Maybe I'm biased? PHP paid my bills for a long time and currently I'm a front-end developer that works mostly with Angular (but sometimes I jump into the .NET Core backends). I love JS and TS,…

PHP and Javascript both improved significantly, but both still have horrible legacy baggage that can't be rid of, namely weak typing (not dynamic, where a variable can hold any type, but weak, where "1"+2=3). For me, that makes programming in either language like running in a minefield. And still, I write Javascript daily, because myeusers don't care about weak typing :-)

Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#163

Post by tasuki »

pedrocx486 wrote: post #154
lerax wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Coding JS on keyboard is already bad enough.

It's a bit sad that people today still "fanboy" against a lang, like a lot of people still do for PHP (which has absolutely improved from the absurdity it was). JS followed the same path, ES2016 is an absolute dream to code on. Maybe I'm biased? PHP paid my bills for a long time and currently I'm a front-end developer that works mostly with Angular (but sometimes I jump into the .NET Core backends). I love JS and TS,…

Would you agree that a language X can be objectively superior to language Y?

I worked with PHP professionally for some 10 years, with very competent colleagues from whom I've learned a lot. The PHP ecosystem with Composer and Symfony components is quite good. Still, PHP itself is a terrible language. I have less knowledge but a similar opinion of JavaScript. Doesn't mean people working with PHP or JavaScript are losers - I admire their tenacity and do feel a little bad for them.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#164

Post by bazza451 »

This made my day, absolutely wonderful achievement! Especially the area that you’re now in...it’s really not an easy task to retrain yourself for ML.

I’m 12 years in professionally and still loving every second of it! Currently been slugging out Leetcode problems all hours of the day to try and get myself to an org with a proper engineering track. So maybe further down the line I still might be able to solve computer problems (in some way or form) during my day.

I really hope to someday to be able to come onto HN and do the same thing as you :)

Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#165

Post by moritzmoritz21 »

That sounds so great! You were working in an area where computers had black-green terminals, you saw when people were afraid what will happen if the date changes to 2000 :scream:, you saw the Sony Ericsson handy area, smartphones, tables, wearables and now ML! Exciting man and I want to be able to write here in ~40 years.

Congrats to all what you have achieved! :clap:

Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#167

Post by tarsinge »

tasuki wrote: post #163
pedrocx486 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit sad that people today still "fanboy" against a lang, like a lot of people still do for PHP (which has absolutely improved from the absurdity it was). JS followed the same path, ES2016 is an absolute dream to code on. Maybe I'm biased? PHP paid my bills for a long time and currently I'm a front-end developer that works mostly with Angular (but sometimes I jump into the .NET Core backends). I love JS and TS,…

Would you agree that a language X can be objectively superior to language Y? I worked with PHP professionally for some 10 years, with very competent colleagues from whom I've learned a lot. The PHP ecosystem with Composer and Symfony components is quite good. Still, PHP itself is a terrible language. I have less knowledge but a similar opinion of JavaScript. Doesn't mean people working with PHP or JavaScript are lose…

The point is that a language can evolve so much they are not even the same language. I prefer ES2016 to Python for example.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#168

Post by SonOfLilit »

gedy wrote: post #14
genedangelo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually was only 16, but turned 17 right after I started. I had finished all the math and science courses in my high school in Mississippi and I had a lot of extra time in my senior year. As a junior, I scored the highest in the U.S. on an engineering aptitude test and got a write-up in the local paper. Mitchell Engineering was trying to get into computers but didn't know how to find people who could program. When…

Wonderful to hear that, and congratulations to you for that accomplishment. I worry those type of opportunities are no more, or at least much rarer.

In Israel at least there are probably hundreds (out of a population of 8,000,000) of programmers working professionally below the age of 18. They don't get on-the-job training, though, it's just so easy to teach yourself at home or in high school.

When I was 17 I started a program connecting high tech firms to winners of a programming competition for high schoolers that is still going, 14 years later :-) But I was far from the first to do this here.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

#169

Post by em-bee »

dang wrote: post #104
genedangelo wrote: post #51

Wow! I appreciate all the interest and feedback - quite unexpected. I'm glad I found HN. I'll try to add more responses tomorrow.

(I'm a moderator here. Welcome to HN!) Because you're likely to get a flood of comments and questions overnight, I've switched an alpha feature on for your account that will highlight new comments that have appeared since you last viewed the page. They'll show up with a colored bar to the left of the comment. The feature doesn't work perfectly yet, but hopefully it'll help you keep track of what's been posted since y…

how about a checkbox in the profile for people willing to test new features? i bet you'll find a number of volunteers.

i am definetly interested in this one. i often search for timestamps to find newer comments. color markers would make that a lot easier.

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