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Aging programmer

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Re: Aging programmer

#301

Post by YZF »

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…

54 no beard here ;)

If you're talking about web applications then I tend to disagree. The SaaS paradigm and the UI living in a browser are relatively new ideas that are still maturing. I don't think there is a lot of good "what was already there" and we're just seeing the evolution of tooling for this ecosystem, not completely decoupled from the evolution of the large companies that rely on this tooling. Not sure it's worth getting frustrated about... I tend to just stay away from it because I prefer to work in areas that are less fluid. And sure, sometimes there's just Not Invented Here syndrome and let's reinvent the wheel instead of using existing wheels. Nothing new about that either, it's always been like that.

All that said, the principles of how everything works are unchanged. People that only learn to use a framework are just not good software developers. People that understand the principles can work in any framework. This has always been true and is still true. There's a shortage of people that really know their sh*t and there's always been as well. That's great... I'll never run out of work (I might run out of motivation ;) ).

Re: Aging programmer

#302

Post by malthuswaswrong »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #294
pyuser583 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen a lot of older programmers. They can wind up working as a team of one because they’re productive enough to do the work of an entire team. I’ve seen this a lot. Hire older dev. Older dev has decades of experience. Older dev creates new product from scratch in a couple weeks. Another issue is that mentoring is focused on junior devs by senior (6-8 years of experience) devs. So you’re less likely to have a sen…

I have 20 yoe but happy to be mentored by someone with much less. There is too much to learn out there, so good chance the less experienced engineer can help me too.

There is too much to learn out there

It's crazy. I sometimes get the itch to learn a new language like Rust, but I haven't even come close to reaching the bottom of all the languages I already know. They are inventing new things faster than anyone can acquire them.

Re: Aging programmer

#304

Post by YZF »

somenameforme wrote: post #98
krmboya wrote: post #10

I wonder where the genesis is of this idea that programming is young person's game akin to physical sports where speed, explosiveness and endurance matter. It seems to me that it's an intellectual activity where one should go on for very long honing their skills and becoming better and better at it with age. Maybe the industry sidelines the older more experienced technical folks at a cost, and that's why there seems…

Chess is a primarily mental competition, but players at the top of the world tend to hit their peak at around 35 years old. Players can continue playing at an exceptionally high level until the end of their life, but on average there is a gradual downward slide from that peak. Magnus Carlsen, the current world champ and arguably strongest player of all time, has decided to simply stop defending his title (held since…

I don't think programming today is that different. I've been programming since 1982 or so and I don't think it's fundamentally that different. You have to keep learning new stuff. That's the way it's always been. That's what it means to be a programmer. But the new stuff is just the old stuff and the basics are the same.

By the way, electric engineering of today is also quite different from electric engineering of the 80's. You have to learn new tools. Maybe if you work for an electric utility it's still the same though I tend to doubt that as well.

Re: Aging programmer

#305

Post by malthuswaswrong »

kbcool wrote: post #261
w4ffl35 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for…

I'm an older engineer too and I am very aware of how frustrating this can be for techs of all ages so I made our screening test less fizzbuzz, do my work for me and gotcha questions and more real world, challenging, engaging and most of all interesting. Examples include: How would you solve this at a high level, here's some code we know is broken, how would you both fix and improve it etc. After all, both parties are…

over the years I have seen a good 30% refuse to do it

I'll do reasonable take homes, but I'll often pass on interactive coding sessions. I don't like coding in a browser, and I use my dev tools as a major crutch.

"Why did you store that value as a string instead of a long?"

"Because it's a string from standard in and I have no idea what bullshit inputs there will be so I can check it before casting it."

"But the user story said it will be a number."

Well if I had more than 15 minutes maybe I would have been able to gain confidence in the input. Something like that comes from many years of experience getting burned yet it's considered a negative mark. Some of these places are actually selecting for recklessness.

Re: Aging programmer

#306

Post by YZF »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #202

I'm 60. I've been writing software since 1983. For 25 years, in between, I was a manager. At one point, I progressed in my career, until I only managed, and did no coding (for money). So I coded on the side. That's a big reason for all the open-source stuff that I have in my portfolio[0]. When I was told that the software industry has no use for old coders, I took my toys and went home. I was kind of butthurt. But th…

Hey Chris,

I'm younger than you by a bit, have been coding since 1982. Some similar background (low level stuff, embedded, designed some boards). I'm now a manager (for a few years) and it's hard for me to find time to code which kind of maybe sucks. Am unsure ;) I still do a little. Given I have a family and other interests I just can't imagine myself writing software on my "free" time (which isn't that much given my day job is pretty demanding). That's what I used to do before this was work (high school and such). How did you manage to juggle work and do open source work at the same time? Do you just do this full time now?

Re: Aging programmer

#307

Post by justrudd »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #300
justrudd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m kind of in this boat. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now (jeez). Mentoring a dev with 6 to 8 years experience is a pain in the butt (yes. I know. Not all of you). While I’ve got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I don’t have a direct or complete answer for their question. I’ll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their question. So I’ll give them that as a starting point and tell them how I’d ap…

I'm working with a junior dev now and the phrase that I keep repeating is "slow the fuck down". He's completely frantic with the copy and paste. I'm watch him google something, click the first link, paste the code into his project, and when it doesn't work he's on to the next link, paste, repeat. He doesn't even back out the changes he made the first time that didn't work. I spent hours fixing his code and hand it ba…

That sucks. I wish I could say I’ve never had one of these. And luckily I haven’t had one go as badly as yours. The main one I recall is when I had a good manager at the time, and he noticed the amount of time I was spending with the junior. So my manager took it over until they got to more meaty issues that required discussions with me.

Re: Aging programmer

#308

Post by rstuart4133 »

StevePerkins wrote: post #97

I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to retire. These next couple of years look like they might not be fun, but overall it looks like I'm actually going to make it. For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged. During the late-2000's, I even…

I'm the other side of 60. Quit my job and took up contracting after the founders of the firm I had been employed by for decades sold out to a firm maybe 100 times the size. I stressed out wondering if I could still cut it with the young guns.

I was contracted to create the backend for a SaaS platform, from scratch. It runs on AWS, using a lot of AWS services, and is django based. The thing is - I'd never used AWS before, nor django. (I'm not sure how they chose me, to be honest.)

Picking all this new stuff up at my age it's nowhere near as easy as it used to be. But the process of writing software is not just learning libraries - and the rest I have down pat now. I immediately set designing the data structures and databases, wrote a spec based on those structures and got the spec reviewed before I started (I had to pound the table to make that happen). Then head down, arse up writing code as fast as I could. I had to deliver it all without an AWS platform to run it on, or a front end to drive it - but you don't get to my age without knowing a thing or two about unit effective testing.

Then after delivering, I was told it had all been changed by the UI guy, so massive refactoring. Unit tests are worth their weigh in gold when that happens.

All the while I was told I was talking too long, which ramps up the pressure and self doubt even more. (But with me muttering - what did you expect when change the UI I had based the spec on without telling me, ffs.) Boy do you lean on unit tests when that happens.

Then the first code drop, which was few tens of thousands of lines of code done in a few months. Which if you crunch the numbers, was 20% of the size their existing code base, delivered by one guy, in 5% of the time it took several people to develop the existing thing. Bug rate after unit tests was below 1 bug per 5k LOC.

Turns out they were begrudgingly impressed by that. So right now it seems I still can match it with the young guys. Yes learning new stuff is harder and slower, but I make up for it very efficient software methodologies honed over decades, which when I can apply them for a few weeks straight leave them in the dust.

The way I feel now it seems when I'm 70 pulling that sort of stunt will be impossible, so I don't have too many more job changes left in me. But at 50, you have a while to go yet son.

Re: Aging programmer

#309

Post by LtWorf »

Cd00d wrote: post #298
LtWorf wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once at an hackaton a computer science phd student ended up in my team. He was unable to execute a .py file.

Why didn't you help your teammate? A PhD doesn't mean that a person knows everything . It means they made progress in understanding in a narrow area. Might not have included Python.

He was beyond help. That was far from being the only issue.

Re: Aging programmer

#310

Post by ornornor »

I don’t think I have it in me to become an old programmer.

I absolutely love programming. It’s the best feeling in the world.

A decade of doing it for money, being treated like an assembly line worker who gets bossed around by a PO that has no technical knowledge, and being constantly asked to drive the bus in the wall has sucked every last bit of enjoyment out of it. Or forcing me to go with a brain dead design that I’ve warned will cause us 10x the headache afterwards.

I’m not even 40 but can’t wait to retire and leave all these dumpster fires behind.

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