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Aging programmer

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Re: Aging programmer

#321

Post by mmsimanga »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #302
quickthrower2 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To add it's not just languages. I was once assigned to teach Cognos a BI tool that's been around a while. I was given the instructor's manuals to go through. It was then I realised how incredible sophisticated the software was and I also realised most people didn't even use 50% of the software's capabilities. I have found the same with text editors and IDEs. You can use an editor for five years and still continue to discover new features.

Re: Aging programmer

#322

Post by lifeisstillgood »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #265
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #135

So this is the (current) opening paragraph for my book: ############ There is a common refrain in large companies, almost a badge of honour.:: "I used to write software, but then I became a manager and stopped. But I am still technical." How many of these managers used to read and write English (or Spanish or Japanese) , and how many, once they became managers, stopped? But are still literate? It is no longer possibl…

Tbh I don’t understand how that gap could be closed. It’s not like this is the first generation or career or field with managers and ICs; has it ever closed?

It's politics - if we take a simple view of humanity over past 10,000 years we have seen a drift from "one strong man owns it all do as he says" to more distributed decision making - different resource allocation from different people - different concepts (trade, communication, cities, writing, money) have made it simpler / easier for more people to be invoked in the efficient allocation of resources

I think software is going to be a big part in this

Re: Aging programmer

#323

Post by collyw »

ecpottinger wrote: post #211
JackMorgan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know quite a few engineers who simply no longer need to work ever again, and are working just for "funemployment".

The difference, an engineer is told what to build and tries to do that. A programmer is told what to do, and half way thru development they have the boss show up and say 'I just read of this brilliant idea in BusinessWeek, lets add/change the code to do .....".

Except it's usually more "I just read about fantastic technology X, we need to use that". Ignoring the actually problems we have and whether technology X will solve them in any way at all.

Re: Aging programmer

#324

Post by tomduncalf »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #224
dominotw wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not . I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no practical use but the upsides are that they make job hopping trival because you know what to expect and feel confident. I think its a tiny investment for big returns. unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in.

> unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in. Huh. Never heard that before. I invest my time in writing " shippable " code. Even my "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they were to be released by a Fortune 50 company. That means that Every. Single. Line. Of. Code. that I write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave…

I think you’re missing the point of the parent post. In terms of an investment in your career, if you’re optimising for money, it’s hard to argue that learning to do Leetcode can have huge returns. Whether it actually makes you a better developer is a different issue entirely

Re: Aging programmer

#325

Post by tomduncalf »

Tolexx wrote: post #315
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, fair 'nuff. Right now, I'm working on a data parser for a backend API that fetches a JSON response, using the built-in NSURLSession stuff, turns it into a Swift Dictionary, then I sort through that Dictionary, and emit a bunch of Swift struct instances for use by the API consumer. The reason for this, is because the API that I wrote about seven years ago, is giving us performance problems. I wrote about that in t…

>But maybe I'm doing it all wrong, and I should stop working on this to practice leetcode. Junior here and not as experienced as you are but I resonate with a lot of what you have written so far. I'm more of let my work and projects speak for itself. I also hate leetcode or code challenge kinda interviews. So far I haven't have to take any to get a job and I plan on never taking or doing any. If I see that an intervi…

Just be aware that by doing so you are ruling out a huge swathe of companies, typically the ones who pay much more than the rest [1]. It’s fine to do so, money isn’t everything, but I think it’s worth being aware of the trade off. FWIW I think any reasonably competent developer can master Leetcode to a good enough level in maybe a few months (outside of work)… The Manning Grokking Algorithms book is a nice simple intro.

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Re: Aging programmer

#326

Post by saurik »

mmsimanga wrote: post #321
malthuswaswrong wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To add it's not just languages. I was once assigned to teach Cognos a BI tool that's been around a while. I was given the instructor's manuals to go through. It was then I realised how incredible sophisticated the software was and I also realised most people didn't even use 50% of the software's capabilities. I have found the same with text editors and IDEs. You can use an editor for five years and still continue to…

I have been programming for over 30 years now, and one thing I consider myself an expert in is bash... hell: the (original) author of bash is someone I have known well and used to work for, and he considers me an expert in bash (which is probably another example of this in and of itself), and I once spent a couple months writing my own bash-compatible shell replacement for various reasons with him on the sidelines cheering me on.

Well: I have recently been teaching programming to a 10-year old kid, and this morning he told me about the syntax {X..Y}, which expands to the range of characters between X and Y. I have likely typed {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} a thousand times and now I know you can write {0..9}. I was floored and have it on my todo list tomorrow to see if that is a new feature or if I simply somehow missed it in the man page--which I thought I had carefully read multiple times and which I additionally have skimmed many times--consistently for decades :(.

Re: Aging programmer

#327

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

tomduncalf wrote: post #324
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in. Huh. Never heard that before. I invest my time in writing " shippable " code. Even my "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they were to be released by a Fortune 50 company. That means that Every. Single. Line. Of. Code. that I write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave…

I think you’re missing the point of the parent post. In terms of an investment in your career, if you’re optimising for money, it’s hard to argue that learning to do Leetcode can have huge returns. Whether it actually makes you a better developer is a different issue entirely

> I think you’re missing the point of the parent post.

It's also possible that I didn't "miss the point."

They did ask "Why not". It may have been rhetorical, but I pretended that it wasn't.

Of course, like all these types of things, I have my own approach. It's fine, if others don't want to do things the way that I do, but I'm not into playing "Me Big Man on Campus" games. I just talk about the way that I do stuff, and my own approach.

For me, I can't even imagine "job hopping." I stayed at my last job, 27 years.

If "job hopping" is someone's idea of a career, then I guess leetcode is the way to go.

But if we want to stick around, that means that we can't just have a veneer of competence. We need to actually have it.

Re: Aging programmer

#328

Post by mistr0 »

tayo42 wrote: post #316
beej71 wrote: post #94

I found I lost interest in vapid work. Programming is still fun, but it's a big challenge to find a job that is fulfilling. When I was younger, I'd work on whatever. Then everything started sounding like yet another get rich quick company, and is that what I was giving up my life for? Just to move little green pieces of paper around? The most appealing thing I'd seen recently was a company that wrote software to help…

What do you teach? Like computer science at a college? Or something else? How did you make the switch? Was thinking about somehow doing some casual teaching as a step back from a corporate programing career for a bit

Not this thread's OP but I can answer - I studied CS at uni, graduated in 2006. Worked for 12 months or so, no more than that, in a couple of smaller companies, and it didn't really click (at the time, I found the work uninteresting and couldn't see what progression in said companies would look like). Went into teaching secondary school (UK, ages 11-18) and am still doing just that. As mentioned above, I get to find out about and discuss geeky things with young people with whom I have shared interests (mostly!); on top of this, I get to run extra-curricular activities with them and do things like chess, golf and board games - it is very rewarding, although not really in a financial sense!

Re: Aging programmer

#329

Post by speed_spread »

technion wrote: post #255
yu3zhou4 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The strongest signal back then was serious contribution to any open source projects (strangely today that almost seems to count against you) Would you mind sharing why contribution to open source might have a negative impact for an interview?

People in several enterprises have told me having a visible open source profile would represent a cultural fit issue.

"You're too independently motivated to work here."

Re: Aging programmer

#330

Post by sgerenser »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #171
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…

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…

In theory that’s what TripleByte was supposed to be, but it didn’t really work out in practice. At best being screened by them got you past an initial screener call but you still had to go through the full gauntlet of interviews at most companies. Then they realized they weren’t making money and started doing shady stuff with personal data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837
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