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Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

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Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#151

Post by bsder »

jacobyoder wrote: post #139
FWKevents wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Thanks for the honest response. I'm your age, and find the same reluctance from young people to listen to me when I've been down that road before. They really do have to learn from making mistakes, as they keep telling you, and can't learn from your experience. I'm not defending them for not taking advantage of the diamonds right in front of them, but I also understand their need to experience things for themselv…

Partially through trial and error, partially from other people, partially from books, etc. It's not so much that "these young kids won't listen" that's annoying, but this mantra of "we're all here to learn from each other - that's how we grow!". Except... if it's me. Then you choose not to learn from me. Or older people in general. Just drop the "feel good we're all a team" facade, because it doesn't represent what y…

Youth is dumb.

When I was in my 20's, my mentors were all 50+. And, quite often, I would have to hit the wall before the good advice they gave me made sense. I realized later that I was really irritating to them at many points. It took me, like, 4 times hearing "You might want to think about that" from my main mentor before I started mentally translating that to "Dumbass. You're about to hit the wall. Again."

I am not a smart man.

They stuck with me because the magnitude of my vector was large (ah, the province of youth--boundless energy), so, even if I had a significant amount in a useless direction, I also had a significant chunk in a useful direction. And I would learn--I rarely made the same mistake (but I was quite good at making new mistakes ...)

However, if the people around (not just the kids) really don't understand that you're an expert at what you do, you really should think about getting a different job. If the consultants are willing to pick information from your brain, that's a good sign that you really do know what's going on. In return, you should make use of their people network--poke at the consultants you think are good. And right now is a good time to be making such a job change.

Ageism is a thing. On the flip side, the number of greybeards in this field continues to increase year on year--the people who learned computers as kids in the 1980s are now hitting their 50s.

Good luck and hang in there. You're not alone.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#152

Post by wofo »

Just wanted to say thanks to you all! My dad was incredibly happy with your feedback and ideas. I don't think he is going to make the jump after all, and it I trust things are going to end up well one way or another.

As a nice side note, my family followed this thread with great enthusiasm and I am proud that they get to see the best of HN!

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#154

Post by jerome-jh »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #153

Maybe I'm overghinking the term ... but why would you ask for a "career"? How about "starting to work as programmer at 61"? Sounds much more doable and less over-enthuisiastic.

I am equally puzzled by the use of the word "career". I would add that starting whichever new job at 61 will be a challenge especially with no previous experience. Given that, why not programming?

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#156

Post by watmough »

I wasn't planning on posting, lots of great answers already in the thread, but has he considered learning Oracle DB administration, the various admin tools, and PL/SQL programming.

There is a lot of work out there managing Oracle installs, populating databases, and all the other duties associated with running Oracle instances.

There's plenty of scope for programming, and the work should be more regular hours and less stressful on the whole than an entry-level programming job.

Additionally, it should be reasonably easy to break into the field via the various certifications, and the tools and DB itself are accessible for self-directed learning.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#157

Post by b20000 »

unmole wrote: post #106
GoldenMonkey wrote: post #94

Programming is hard. It is competitive. The programming languages change every 2 yrs. 61 yr old programmers who have programmed much of their careers. Find ageism and irrelevancy if they have not kept up with the changing technologies. Your father is choosing a harder path. That may not be worth the time, effort and energy. And starting with no relevant skills to programming. Some better options with competitive pay:…

> The programming languages change every 2 yrs. And here I am getting paid to write C. It's been around since *checks notes* 1972.

this. avoid learning fad languages.

out of curiosity what kind of software are you writing in C?

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#158

Post by tychonoff »

alberth wrote: post #137

Personal anecdote… My father worked into his 80s and I saw firsthand how once he hit 60 years old how much harder it was for him to land a new job. As such, I’ve always gone out of my way to ensure such folks get a fair shot in my ~25 years of being a people manager. And every time I’ve hired someone 60+, even if they are new/junior for the role - it’s worked out in spades. The unique perspective, what’s seems like a…

I'm a 73-year-old Canadian programmer with no formal education in computing.

After completing a PhD in pure Mathematics, I started working the next day writing scheduling algorithms in Fortran on an IBM 4341 (my supervisor played poker with the company President, so that helped).

Although I picked up Fortran quickly, I had to study scheduling algorithms because my specialty was mathematical logic.

Then I became a university Statistical consultant, but I knew nothing about that either (my boss wanted to learn logic).

Five years later, when Prolog became a popular AI language, I quit my job and began writing expert systems as an independent.

Prolog (PROgramming in LOGic) is based on the first-order predicate calculus, so my formal training was exactly what I needed to understand logic programming.

After that I branched into databases, which I'm still doing as an independent.

So, I didn't need to know anything about computing to become a programmer.

But my domain knowledge (math) gave me a powerful tool to solve some computing problems.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#159

Post by unmole »

b20000 wrote: post #157
unmole wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The programming languages change every 2 yrs. And here I am getting paid to write C. It's been around since *checks notes* 1972.

this. avoid learning fad languages. out of curiosity what kind of software are you writing in C?

Network protocols, kernel modules, proxies and filesystems. To be fair parts of them were written in C++, Go and even Python.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

#160

Post by adamredwoods »

martin_a wrote: post #41

I'm 35 and I would not start again with programming. Maybe it's some kind of chicken-egg problem, but I find it harder and harder to stay "on top" of the situation, the ever-changing web ecosystems and whatnot, because I have so little time to learn everything new and understand it and use it. Maybe it's less of a struggle with other languages, and if you do it fulltime, but I find it stressful and it gets worse. I d…

It was indeed difficult (40+ myself).
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