Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aging programmer

world.hey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 375 posts

Re: Aging programmer

#71

Post by liuliu »

rickreynoldssf wrote: post #65

51 grey beard here. Let me complain about the younguns. So much of what's out there today is, or is based on "solutions" created to solve problems that don't really exist. Rather than try to understand something so many engineers created "frameworks" to implement what was already there. Like 90% of current web stacks are just that. But new engineers are trained on that stuff and think it's the only way. That frustrat…

I sort of know what you are saying. Being dealing with so-called "server-side rendering" v.s. "static generated" recently, and these feel old / boring. It has been 15 years and mostly the same thing reinvented.

However, it is not a negatively thing. We may be able to setup IIS / Apache with Squid two decades ago to do similar things. The bar to do it now is much lower, and the tooling to help achieve that is much better overall (there are some not-so-great: Figma is a great design tool, but it doesn't translate to code directly unlike Dreamweaver / Borland VCL / Visual Basic, but I heard Framer is doing good on that front). That is part of the reason why there are so much more participation of labor in this industry: it is more graphical and easier to do (even terminal tools, largely do the similar things, are much more graphical nowadays!).

Re: Aging programmer

#72

Post by jordanmorgan10 »

This post and its comments warm my soul. At 33 and a decade in, I’ve only recently started to worry about what the tech world in general is telling me:

That I have to become a manager. That I won’t always code until I retire. That I won’t be welcome in the workforce in my later years.

All of those things frighten me! I love programming, and I want to be doing it in my 60s, happily. Glad to see that people are.

Re: Aging programmer

#73

Post by adrianmsmith »

rickreynoldssf wrote: post #65

51 grey beard here. Let me complain about the younguns. So much of what's out there today is, or is based on "solutions" created to solve problems that don't really exist. Rather than try to understand something so many engineers created "frameworks" to implement what was already there. Like 90% of current web stacks are just that. But new engineers are trained on that stuff and think it's the only way. That frustrat…

I share this frustration, but I think the root cause of the frustration is the difference between what I feel should be important, and what actually is important to people.

Getting great reliable software delivered quickly, which is easy to maintain and change, should be the goal, I feel. But if that’s the case, why do people invent problems to find solutions to, why do people spend multiple days a week in Scrum meetings, etc.?

But looking at everyone involved and their actual incentives:

- For a consultant, the objective is to maximize the billable hours.

- For the employee, to get modern skills on their CV.

- For the junior programmer, there is a more level playing field with the seniors when tech is used that’s new and nobody knows, vs. tech the seniors know well and they don’t.

- For the manager or owner of a product company, they want less stress having to make decisions and as long as the product makes money who cares if the software could be delivered 50% or 70% faster?

Re: Aging programmer

#74

Post by w4ffl35 »

tartoran wrote: post #68
w4ffl35 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the hiring manager's objective to hire easily controllable apes that can type, or human beings that can grasp the product and business goals, shape the culture, translate technical jargon into easily understandable concepts for the uninitiated and make the employer a shit load of money by architecting and programming their vision?

Young people aren’t apes who can type, they’re bright young people whose inexperience lends them the qualities I mentioned in my previous comment. In many cases they perform quite well (but not efficiently IMO)

> younger are more maleable and gullible in some aspects

> better capacity (and willingness) to adapt to the tower of babel du jour

this all sounds like you're describing people who can type and do what they are told.

and: we're all apes who can type.

edit: age is irrelevant. my point isn't that older people are better hires. hire for skill.

Re: Aging programmer

#75

Post by dahart »

> I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My desire to discover it is zero. […] Related: working with people you can learn from is a wonderful source of motivation. […] My desire to discuss technical stuff with people, both to help and be helped, is at all-time highs.

FWIW pair programming is very hard to do well and usually pretty uncomfortable. It needs to be structured well and done in smaller doses with lots of breaks. But when it has worked right (which was a small minority of the time for me), it has been exhilarating for me, unquestionably much faster and more productive than coding by myself, and much more fun.

I do think pair programming is also a fabulous way to share workflow tips and tricks. Watching someone drive you will see things you didn’t know, and when people watch you they’ll discover your secrets. Even if pair programming is hard, I think it’s pretty good for the organization to have team members doing it on occasion to help propagate this kind of knowledge more quickly. But yeah YMMV and it does also require self control and letting people do things their way sometimes even if it seems slow.

Re: Aging programmer

#77

Post by yodsanklai »

scarface74 wrote: post #45
sys_64738 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further opportunities as the more senior you are the less available those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of companies only want young people who are naive and have limited distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make…

I keep hearing this. I’m 48 and between the time I was 34 and 46, bumping around in your standard enterprise corp dev jobs, I found jobs relatively quickly - the shortest time was 4 days from starting to look to having a job (corp dev at the time a F10 non tech company), the longest being two weeks. Every time besides the first, I was juggling multiple opportunities and had three offers. I change jobs 5 times during…

> If you’re still randomly submitting your resume to an ATS trying to prove yourself to companies by reversing binary trees on whiteboards while juggling bowling balls and riding a unicycle on a tightrope, you’re doing it wrong at 40+ years old.

I did that at 45 and landed an interesting job at FAANG (and I'm not the only one). I think it's a bit contradictory to think old programmers are still as capable and sharp as 25 years old, and at the same time insisting to be judged on different standards.

Re: Aging programmer

#78

Post by bregma »

I look back on 40 with fondness: I would have been 40 some time around the Y2K bubble. It sure as heck isn't old and I can;t see how a kid of 40 can write about ageing in the industry.

Re: Aging programmer

#79

Post by voakbasda »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #58
tartoran wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but the younger are more maleable and gullible in some aspects but also have the better capacity (and willingness) to adapt to the tower of babel du jour.

Is it the hiring manager's objective to hire easily controllable apes that can type, or human beings that can grasp the product and business goals, shape the culture, translate technical jargon into easily understandable concepts for the uninitiated and make the employer a shit load of money by architecting and programming their vision?

Weak managers hire weak subordinates.

Re: Aging programmer

#80

Post by BlargMcLarg »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #73
rickreynoldssf wrote: post #65

51 grey beard here. Let me complain about the younguns. So much of what's out there today is, or is based on "solutions" created to solve problems that don't really exist. Rather than try to understand something so many engineers created "frameworks" to implement what was already there. Like 90% of current web stacks are just that. But new engineers are trained on that stuff and think it's the only way. That frustrat…

I share this frustration, but I think the root cause of the frustration is the difference between what I feel should be important, and what actually is important to people. Getting great reliable software delivered quickly, which is easy to maintain and change, should be the goal, I feel. But if that’s the case, why do people invent problems to find solutions to, why do people spend multiple days a week in Scrum meet…

The psychological aspect of consultants and even employees trying to play a game with billable hours aside, a lot of developers of all ages genuinely feel using frameworks to do the exact same thing one can achieve with far less hubbub is a good thing, and they have trouble defending it. It's a cargo cult by all standards.

Many of us are living this now. If it's not the chasing of new frameworks, it is old frameworks no longer being actively supported, or key features never being developed. Then it turns out something like vanilla HTML + JS can do the job just fine, but you need to update everything to vanilla to make it uniform.

Post reply on HN