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Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#261

Post by ivanhoe »

vmception wrote: post #196
tehmillhouse wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's definitely something to the neuroplasticity thing. Learning does take longer as we age, that's just a biological fact. > Man what a frustrating journey it has been ! I keep telling myself I'm a seasoned senior dev... This right here, that's something you're misunderstanding. Learning something new is supposed to be uncomfortable. To learn most effectively, you want to shape your mental behavior to min…

I think neuroplasticity is bullshit and is a convenient scapegoat for a shared experience many people have. No different than phrenology explanations for differences in cognitive behaviors, an explanation that is now deprecated. The most clear example is the incentives. Change the incentives and people learn quickly. Find anybody that rationalizes their technophobia with their age, and look at the difference between…

> Change the incentives and people learn quickly.

Not necessarily, I definitely got slower at learning new stuff at 40+ than when I was younger. My memory just doesn't work as good as it used to, and I also have less of "mental energy" to get into the zone and stay there digging until I figure things out. I don't know is it my age, or life style, or health and genetics, or just having a lot more other things going on now than before (wife, kids, running business, etc.). However I'm positive it's not a technophobia, first because I love tech and learning new stuff just as much as I used to, and also because I see this in other, non-technical, areas like with learning a foreign language. And if it's (a lack of) incentives then again it's an external limitation of my capacities to motivate myself which I can't solve and I feel it has to do with the age too.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#262

Post by wonderwonder »

blakewatters wrote: post #138

Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point.…

This is me in a nutshell. I am fried from building things that make no difference. If these things were never built the world wouldn't notice. A life of purpose is the cure for burn out. I have not found it yet but let me know if you do.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#263

Post by dasil003 »

helge9210 wrote: post #198
trevormcneal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whole tech thing is changing fast, ageism is a true thing, in a scenario where most of the previous knowledge can be ignored, being a senior with 5 years of experience, 10 or 20 doesn't change much. Given that young people usually simp for the companies much more due to being naive, they have a huge preference in the hiring process. Tech is removing the root of the knowledge, migrating from understanding the solu…

Half life of knowledge in our profession is more or less a year and a half. This means 5 years of experience is the maximum you can accumulate. Maybe years are not a good metric for experience.

> Half life of knowledge in our profession is more or less a year and a half.

Only if you define your profession as knowing the latest front-end frameworks. In terms of concrete technical knowledge that half-life lengthens as you go down the stack. But beyond knowledge of existing tools and frameworks, there is also the understanding of systems and how they interact with the real world. This is what you need to understand to really give yourself a life-long career. It can still be hard tech (distributed systems, scalability, etc), or it can be a little softer (UX, maintainability, collaboration, etc), but these skills will give you the ability to dwarf the actual business impact of the 25 year-old who has maximized knowledge of the latest tools.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#264

Post by techsin101 »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #35

I know exactly what you mean. As a counter point to the many "burnout answers" here which I completely agree with by the way. It could also be an example of "neuroplasticity" (hear me out). I'm 40 and been coding like it feels forever, I find it "relatively easy" to learn new frameworks or languages. What is much harder are new paradigms; example OOP vs functional. The last few months I've started to learn Clojure. M…

There are two times I noticed I wasn't as good as before mentally. One when I was 17, I noticed that unlike when I was 12 I no longer could memeroize entire books. Which back then I could, I had memorized 12x20 Questions and their answers back to back. But now in HS I felt I'd forget 90% of what I read yesterday. Now to learn I had to write the thing down and act of writing helped me remember things. Second time I noticed is when I was 24 and still in college and when to study in a group. After 10 or so minutes, I had hit my limit with info from one page and just started to skim, but other students who were like 19, kept on writing things down in paper and weren't getting exhausted. I noticed lack of stamina... Now it takes me 3 months to read one book that I'm very interested in. Back then I'd finish a book in 3 days and write 8 page essay on it. So yea things change.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#265

Post by scruple »

myth_drannon wrote: post #170
germs12 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails does 95% of this out of the box. Companies need to understand how much their poor technology decisions cost them...

It's the developers not companies that make this decision. Out of boredom or trying to get promotion. I'm just so tired of seeing something that could have been one static html page but was built with NextJS+lambdas+terraform and a hundred more buzzwords.

> It's the developers not companies that make this decision.

I don't see developers making these decisions anymore, not in large web-based tech companies.

My experience has been that management controls a lot of these decisions and/or steers them in the direction that they want them to go. And the more power a manager holds over a team or department, the more influence they can exert to get their way.

As an example, I'm hearing from a colleague in another department that they're being told by an engineering SVP that all new backend services are to be written in NodeJS. These are .NET developers. How does this guy who is 3 layers above these engineers intend to enforce this "rule?" The implication is you can do this or get fired, I guess, so it's happening regardless of how stupid it is. This was all explained to me when I noticed that I had gotten 3 "so long and thanks for all the fish" emails from long-timers in that department.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#266

Post by thedracle »

I'm similar in that I've jumped between embedded, web dev, etc etc.. through my career, and it was always easy to learn new things.

I think it was actually the newness of the things that made me interested and kept me focussed on them enough to break through and make changes.

The JS world has left me feeling similarly fatigued when every couple of years there is a new variation on what seems to be the same old concepts, with very little conceptually different enough to make it feel like I'm learning something of value.

Maybe deep inside your brain it knows this latest thing you're going to learn is likely to be quickly deprecated, and it just can't bring the dopamine levels in your brain up high enough to keep you focussed and interested.

Definitely it can be burnout, but I wonder also if it could be ADHD linked? Inability to focus on something you have to focus on for your livelihood will absolutely lead to anxiety and depression.

Switching to a different field (Cybersecurity) and writing EBPF tracing stuff really helped restore my confidence that I really enjoy writing software.

A change of scenery can really help, and there are so many interesting new things to choose from out there.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#267

Post by dehrmann »

foobazzy wrote: post #173
fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

> most effective way to recover enthusiasm was to pick up a new skill, work-related or not. I was in my mid-30s in the late aughts and not entirely sure I wanted to keep coding - so I signed myself up for an 18 month "executive MBA" program to find out if I might want to do something else This might sound tangential, but I am at this exact stage in my life. I am in my early 30s and have signed up for the executive MB…

What do you want to do after your MBA?

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#268

Post by flemhans »

fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

I'm doing these mini vacations so often now that they feel routine.

What's next? :P

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#269

Post by jseban »

peteradio wrote: post #256
evilbob93 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and? I agree that years aren't necessarily a good metric for experience, although I have decades in IT - started when I was 19 and retirement is a real thing I have to consider. Years do give you some experience that isn't translatable to the resume: after a while, you've seen through most of the tricks that management likes to try but which the younger colleagues haven't learned. Having older folks around can sp…

What kind of management tricks might someone be missing who hasn't been around too long?

They try to make you commit to additional unofficial work/projects for which you get no extra time or resources. If you fail and burn out, that's just you being a bit "overambitious", and if you succeed, they will just make if official. In that way, they can avoid owning up to any failures and only take responsibility for the successful ones. So you have to be a bit careful in casual conversations with the boss about ideas and possible improvements.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#270

Post by rawoke083600 »

nathanyz wrote: post #221
rawoke083600 wrote: post #35

I know exactly what you mean. As a counter point to the many "burnout answers" here which I completely agree with by the way. It could also be an example of "neuroplasticity" (hear me out). I'm 40 and been coding like it feels forever, I find it "relatively easy" to learn new frameworks or languages. What is much harder are new paradigms; example OOP vs functional. The last few months I've started to learn Clojure. M…

Took this journey myself 8ish years ago to learn Clojure. I think by default most experienced devs in other languages will find it frustrating. It seems to be a language where it is frustrating up to a certain point and then once you cross over that line, somehow it just all makes sense and seems so elegant you almost can't go back to other languages. So just know that if you keep going you will be in for more frustr…

Yea that is what im focussing on "just keep going" no matter the struggle or the ugliness im currently producing :)
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