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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?

#321

Post by jt2190 »

z3t4 wrote: post #222
SonOfLilit wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

Strong/weak and dynamic/static. JS is dynamic, but variables will always have a type, which is memory safe - which makes types strong.

I’ve heard another definition of strong, which is that the compiler will make more guarantees, and in those cases the terminology was:

    * safe/unsafe
    * strong/weak
    * static/dynamic
Note that while safe/unsafe is basically all-or-nothing, strong/weak and static/dynamic are more of a spectrum, so JavaScript would be safe, weaker, and more dynamic than other languages. Typescript makes JS stronger when authoring code.

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

#323

Post by intpete »

marstall wrote: post #312
intpete wrote: post #269

Not looking to compete for the crown, but I have been involved with software development on and off since 1970. I started college in 1969, and really loved my liberal arts and social science courses, but began having panic attacks in class (I found out many years later that I was bipolar). My hail Mary move was switching majors to 'Business Data Processing'. My thought being that programming would give me a salable s…

Thanks for sharing ... how did you manage the panic attacks in the end?

Thanks for asking!

The nature of the illness varies somewhat over time. The panic attacks only seemed to happen when I was in a room with a large group of people. So quitting school largely removed me from those situations.

I was diagnosed as Bipolar 2 in 1997 by a psychiatrist in Manhattan, where I was living with my girlfriend. I started having true bipolar symptoms in USAF Basic Training but made it through (talk about rough), then years later working as a developer, I got to a point where I could just not deal with people. One of the signature characteristics of bipolar (and other similar disorders) is some form of paranoia. People at work would make some mild critical comment and my head would be spinning for days full of anger and fear and pondering what I should have said. The NY psychiatrist asked me just a few questions: 'When was your first clinical depressive episode' (19), and 'are you second-guessing yourself a lot' (Yes. A manifestation of paranoia as noted above).

How did I ultimately deal with the disorder? Wonder drugs! Zyprexa since 1997, Wellbutrin for many years, and lamotrigine, a mood stabilizer. Being bipolar is not something that I notice much anymore.

One thing I would mention for anyone who is listening and suspects they are bipolar: Bipolar people are vulnerable to trauma and PTSD. What helped me was another miracle (IMO), EMDR. A single one hour EMDR session with a trained therapist can rid you of trauma that would take a year or more of talk therapy to accomplish.

Hope that was not too long-winded.

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

#324

Post by genedangelo »

artsyca wrote: post #192

Sir, when you were first starting out what was the standard dress for coders and how have you seen it evolve over the years?

When I started out, business casual was the norm, just as it is today. A big difference was that many of us had "pocket protectors" where we carried our pens, pencils and slide rule. You may have seen those in some movies as a distinguishing feature for nerds.

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

#325

Post by geophile »

Being 63, I don't get to say this very often: I am one of the youngest people in this conversation.

Delighted to read these stories about even-older-than-me old-timers. Even though I am a relative spring chicken, I'll list my old-timey computing experiences:

- Started programming on programmable Wang and Monroe calculators.

- PDP-8m in high school. 12k 12-bit words for four terminals running Basic. By special arrangement, I could take over the whole thing and use FORTRAN.

- IBM-370 in college, and I spent lots of hours on an IBM 029 keypunch. (That's where I developed my love of loud, clicky keyboards.)

- First job with Datasaab (yes, a computer division of Saab), and I programmed in their weird DIL-16 language.

- PDP-11 in grad school.

- Various VAXen in my early working life. Picked up Emacs in 1985 and now it's in my fingertips.

- A buddy and I wrote a book intended to support people who needed to work with a large variety of computing environments, (a real problem my buddy encountered). It was instantly obsolete, as it was published as minis were dying and PCs were becoming dominant. (https://www.amazon.ae/Computer-Professionals-Quick-Reference...)

- Many years in startups, mostly in Unix/Linux environments.

Retired now, but still enjoying programming. Having a blast with my current project: https://github.com/geophile/marcel.

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

#326

Post by pushcx »

owenversteeg wrote: post #69
pushcx wrote: post #60

Margaret Hamilton started her first job in 1959 and is still working: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_en... Depending how and whether you count academia, Donald Knuth may have a slightly longer career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth Feels like a decent chance you're third, then. Certainly you're one of the longest-working programmers. Best of luck. :)

Margaret Hamilton is an inspiration, but is she actually still working at age 83? I can't find anything that would indicate she is. For something like the "longest-working programmer" I'd expect them to have been actually "work"-working during that time. And I think I'd classify Knuth as the slightly different "longest working computer scientist". He's known for his quote "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have onl…

The Wikipedia page I linked to lists a 2018 IEEE paper; her company's website still has her name on it.

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

#327

Post by carapace »

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,…

You're biased, they suck. Doesn't make you a loser for working with them, we all do it. But it's just pulling the wool to think that their obvious utility somehow counter-acts their (also obvious) lousy design. My personal advice is don't identify with your tools. Mark of a mature craftsman is knowing the nature of your tools and getting the job done anyway.

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

#328

Post by paulcole »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #313
paulcole wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like in Shawshank. First you can’t stand the bars, then you get used to them, then you can’t live without them. After 50+ years of structured work people forget how to be in charge of themselves.

Or, more optimistically, if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. I love programming too and have no plans on stopping either. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Programming is the thing you love the most and if it was 100% up to you what to do with your time you’d still do it?

I mean I don’t hate my job but damn I’d just sit in front of the TV and go for walks if that was an option.

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

#329

Post by kshacker »

philtar wrote: post #288
pscoutou wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP and not in their age group but I would say it comes down to either genetics, lifestyle choices or combination of both. I made a bunch of lifestyle choices (lost weight, keto diet, being more active, less screen time at night, etc). As a result I've noticed a significant increase in energy levels and mental clarity.

Not to be rude but: > Not OP and not in their age group Then why are you answering?

He wanted to share similar experience with the caveats up front. Concept of free country, free world, free internet :)

I had similar reconnaissance but now I hesitate to share. But challenge accepted, worst case is downvotes :) 4 years back, maybe 5 I used to think this is how old age was (would not mention my age but it is younger than the main OP), body slowly unable to do what is used to be able to do. Then after 2 stents and change in lifestyle, I find I can do same or more than what I could do 5 years back, maybe a decade back. Will it continue like this for next decade, or the decade after that? Who knows? But there are many things within the that are in the range of probability and it is on us to push towards the higher end of the range. For those who start disciplined, it may not make much of a difference, but think of an average person ... I think programming at 70 should be feasible for most as long as they fixed their lifestyle by 50. [Most but not all because this is a game of odds]

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