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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?

#211

Post by lugged »

teddyh wrote: post #204

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things . Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry. Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experien…

Except it is inspirational, and it is impressive.

That doesn't reveal anything other than the state of the industry.

It is a new industry. Many people have been around for most of it or at least large chunks of it. It's impressive when, out of the 60 odd years of a profession existing, one person has been going at it for 57 years of it.

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

#212

Post by pxsant »

I am 80 years old and still working full time in IT. Although I evolved from pure programming to project management and business analysis the past few years. Originally started out working at Cape Canaveral as a radar and telemetry engineer and moved into programming after I left there. Whenever I interview, I completely ignore the age issue. If the interviewer is to dumb to recognize the value of my knowledge and experience, that is on them. Finally completed my PhD in Computer science when I was in my 60's.

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

#213

Post by eganist »

teddyh wrote: post #204

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things . Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry. Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experien…

> Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice.

I agree with this with the word "impressive," but with the word "inspirational," I don't think we can paint with such a broad brush.

Consider that many companies have career progression tracks that escalate engineers out of hands-on engineering roles into e.g. architecture roles or managerial roles. Add on top of that the number of people who burn out doing something they love because they find themselves no longer enjoying it now that it's their job.

I can't find hard numbers for or against my hypothesis, but anyone who stays committed to their passion as their line of work for a sustained period of time, even passing through the stages of burnout that might arise, would likely be inspirational to others in the field who might've burned out or feel like they're about to.

That said, your acute awareness of age bias is something I think more of us in tech (especially infosec in my case) need to actively embrace.

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

#214

Post by andrepd »

teddyh wrote: post #204

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things . Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry. Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experien…

So people complimenting are actually prejudiced against? That's quite a stretch. It's impressive, if nothing else, the span of computer history he's witnessed and continuously was a part of. 63 was practically since the beginning. Also, most people at 74 either don't want to work anymore or (more likely) aren't able to due to their health. So it's doubly inspirational that he/she has the same enthusiasm at 74 that they had at 20.

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

#215

Post by metaralf »

artsyca wrote: post #206
teddyh wrote: post #204

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things . Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry. Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experien…

The current crop of coders is not going to age well

I fear this, too. Too many of the new brains are helpless without frameworks.

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

#216

Post by eganist »

andrepd wrote: post #214
teddyh wrote: post #204

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things . Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry. Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experien…

So people complimenting are actually prejudiced against? That's quite a stretch. It's impressive, if nothing else, the span of computer history he's witnessed and continuously was a part of. 63 was practically since the beginning. Also, most people at 74 either don't want to work anymore or (more likely) aren't able to due to their health. So it's doubly inspirational that he/she has the same enthusiasm at 74 that th…

> So people complimenting are actually prejudiced against?

Not related to your comment, but there's certainly precedent for this:

"You're so articulate"

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

#217

Post by chrisweekly »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #161
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,…

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 :-)

If you really care so much, why not simply embrace TypeScript?

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

#218

Post by artsyca »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #208
artsyca wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current crop of coders is not going to age well

Why?

Ethics are completely dead JauntyHatAngle and the atmosphere is no longer one of irreverent fun and learning but chilling effects, groupthink and rudderless management I could write a whole paragraph about it but 57 years ago this was viewed as a new frontier whereas now it's literally a war zone

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

#219

Post by hownottowrite »

teddyh wrote: post #204

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things . Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry. Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experien…

I think that’s sort of true. I just crossed 50. I‘ve been writing code in one flavor or another since I was a kid.

I’ll probably still be writing code when I’m 74, because I like to make the machines jump and shout. But as a working pro? Probably not.

Personally, I find it impressive that the OP has managed to stay relevant and active. Hard to do in any field and not just because of ageism.

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

#220

Post by pjmorris »

lugged wrote: post #210
weinzierl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the way he likes to paint himself. From a lecture he gave at my university I remember that he said something along the lines of, that he usually came up with the idea and others wrote the code. From the experience out of the same lecture, however, I can tell you first hand that he knows his way around code and that he can code. The lecture was indeed more of a hands on workshop with Knuth spending most of the…

Just because he can code doesn't mean he does on a daily basis for a day job, which is what this ask hn post is about no?

Arguably, TAoCP has been his day job since the 60's, and it's full of code.
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