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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?

#361

Post by fsckboy »

paulcole wrote: post #352
jlokier wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I love programming, among other things that people might regard as similar to programming. The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Solving technical problems is vastly more satisfying than that. It's like maths to a mathematician, physics to a physicist. Why would they ever stop, given freedom to carry…

> The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Can you acknowledge that solving technical problems for decades is just as horrifying to me? And that watching TV and doing nothing is extremely satisfying to me?

I have no problem understanding your preferences and I don't question your choices, except for one: why would you spend time on news.ycombinator? I assume you find it ... fun?

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

#362

Post by shse »

genedangelo wrote: post #277
wwweston wrote: post #53

Periodically there are questions here about dealing with burnout and learning to cope with technological change/churn. Someone who's been doing it enthusiastically for over half a century sounds like exactly the kind of person who could offer advice on that. Do you have any?

The one thing that comes to mind is to avoid the "hammer looking for a nail" syndrome. I see this all the time, especially in academia. Rather than worry about learning all the latest stuff, concentrate on solving the problem at hand in the simplest and most effective manner. If that requires you to learn new things, then that's a great time to expand your repertoire - working on a specific problem. Of course you hav…

That’s one of the best software engineering advices I’ve ever heard. You should write a book. Seriously.

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

#363

Post by zerr »

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.

Continuing programming != continuing being an employee, working for others.

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

#364

Post by vulcan01 »

mech422 wrote: post #293
codingdave wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myself, it was my optometrist's idea. I get one "free" pair a year from my vision coverage, and when a year rolled in where my old prescription hadn't changed much, he suggested getting computer glasses instead. My only problem is forgetting to change glasses when I go out, and not really noticing til I hit a main road and wonder why the street signs are blurry.

I'm so near sighted, I wouldn't make it out the door without my glasses :-) Have you tried the 'blue blocker' type lenses? If so, how do you like them ?

Not the person you're replying to, but I've had the blue-blocker (I think Costco calls them 'computer lenses' confusingly). They do shift colours towards the yellow range, but not as much as the computer "night shift" (so that the rest of the world looks normal) :) I've found that I can sit at my computer for longer, compared to when I didn't have blue-blocking lenses. It's probably just personal preference :)

I'm also very nearsighted :)

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

#365

Post by [deleted] »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #346
wolco wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone likes different things. '1'+1=2 prevents a lot of errors. The languages tries to help you along compared to an harsh error. Maybe you want a harsh error.. halting everything until you declare a new variable with the same type and have to go through a manual conversion. For me let the language handle that. If you are tdding anything unexpected will be caught anyhow if you are worried how things convert. It's…

Implicit string to number conversion is more like C in terms of memory management, in the sense that it's a huge footgun that you will definitely shoot yourself with. I have never seen it prevent errors, only make them worse by hiding them from QA so they can reach production and ruin your weekend.

[deleted]

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

#366

Post by thomaslord »

paulcole wrote: post #352
jlokier wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I love programming, among other things that people might regard as similar to programming. The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Solving technical problems is vastly more satisfying than that. It's like maths to a mathematician, physics to a physicist. Why would they ever stop, given freedom to carry…

> The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Can you acknowledge that solving technical problems for decades is just as horrifying to me? And that watching TV and doing nothing is extremely satisfying to me?

I want to start by acknowledging that's a totally legitimate perspective.

I'm curious though - do you think you'd be fine with only doing walks and TV for 40+ hours a week? Personally I got interested in computers and programming very early, and at first it was 100% a leisure activity. It stayed at roughly that level of exciting for me until probably 6 months to a year into being employed as a developer, but it's no longer the #1 thing I like to do when I'm not at work. My current situation is work with a side of typical relaxation (watch tv, browse the internet, etc.), but I expect when I eventually retire I'll start spending a bunch of leisure time on programming and general messing-with-computers stuff again.

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

#367

Post by dleslie »

genedangelo wrote: post #318
dleslie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider what you do to be programming? How does it compare to, say, hand-writing C?

There is no doubt what I do is programming. It's similar in some ways to SQL, but the tool I use enables me to implement much more complexity than possible in plain SQL. It actually enables a lot of the functionality available in a procedural language like C, but within a structure built around database manipulations and joins. In this way it breaks the bounds of memory constraints and becomes a big data programming…

That's quite interesting! Thanks for responding. :)

You don't type; is the way you create this logic similar to Ladder Logic, Pure Data or Touch Designer?

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

#368

Post by boomlinde »

gregjor wrote: post #42
BracketMaster wrote: post #11

Where do you work now? And also, I've heard that at Google for example, there is prejudice against older programmers? Have you experienced anything like that?

I think the age discrimination comes from the mostly younger staff, not so much the company. Works out the same, of course, when you’re told you aren’t a “good cultural fit.”

A company is its staff

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

#369

Post by ecpottinger »

jlokier wrote: post #335
paulcole wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personally I love programming, among other things that people might regard as similar to programming. The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Solving technical problems is vastly more satisfying than that. It's like maths to a mathematician, physics to a physicist. Why would they ever stop, given freedom to carry…

Yep, the lockdown means I am at home all the time, so I started pulling out hardware to make things, programming the programs that always I was working on in the back of my head and finish writing the fan-fics I have going.

The idea that you only do things because it is your job suggests a limited life, I remember when I was working telling the others about all the trips and cruises I did on my time off. When I asked they what they did on vacation they always went to the same places year after year. I guess that is what they wanted.

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