Interesting that this article popped up not too long after the discussion about the TikTok "teen" filter, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34918735. The top comment on that post is "As a GenX who played with that filter yesterday, I don't understand why anyone's reaction would be to cry." Well, this is certainly one reason why.
The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
161–170 of 194 posts
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#162I am 33 yet feel mentally like an 80 year old dementia patient. Physically I'm fine, I can do kip ups all day long, but I feel like I have forgotten more than I can ever hope to relearn.
I feel like this is because it’s the first time any signs of age start to show. I’m 35 and my body just doesn’t like the things I did with it even 10 years ago. Half of my beard is gray. I feel like this is something that should happen to other ‘older’ people.
35 was when I first started needing naps after the lunch at work. That's when I realized I need to save enough money by 50 to retire from my programming job, and I did.
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my personal experience working with Kotlin saves you half the time on typing alone.
Typing code is probably less than 5% of my daily time as a SWE.
Why is this being downvoted? :-) It's totally true. The actual kinetics of coding from a "typing" perspective is a tiny part of any software engineer's job...
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#164I was moderately precocious in my programming and in my career, though probably not terribly so by the standards of this crowd. I got started in C when I was 9 or 10, and ran Linux on the desktop from 6th grade onward, hacked on device drivers and the like in my middle and high school years, that kind of stuff. I had a relatively "meteoric" early career before going out on my own, going through 6 jobs between age 18 and 22, in some cases doubling my income as I went. I was the chief sysadmin of a small local ISP at 19 (which says more about the ISP), and I was holding fairly serious senior titles at more serious companies in the big city by age 21 or so, making more than my dad at the time, who was a professor. (The consequences of being this young and stupid with this much money are a grim topic for another day.)
Anyway, the main age-related shift I've experienced is that the socio-professional aura of my skills and experience went from "holy crap, he's 20 year-old wunderkind" to just kind of table stakes. Nobody's really shocked that mid-30s me is pretty good at what I do and have a lot of experience doing it, and it hasn't been a shock in quite a while.
Sure, I'm a lot more credible now as a self-employed consultant than I was at, say, 23, but younger me was a bit of a primadonna and had a big head because I front-loaded so much of the career development and climbing the ladder, at least as engineering per se goes. In these settings, lots of older people resent you (for reasons I find very justifiable in hindsight), but plenty of people pat you on the head along the way, too. I'm not praise-dependent in any extraordinary way, I'd like to think, but anyone can be habituated to something pleasant and can it be a bit of a jolt to feel the tide going out. In addition to undergoing the normal humbling that comes with getting older and realising you're not as brilliant as everyone around you leads you to believe, people also stop telling you you're brilliant to begin with. :-)
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#165I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
I don't get this TBH. I work with younger coworkers and I recognize them falling for similar traps I did years/decade ago. I don't see my coworkers getting less competent, I'm just aware that I did way more stupid shit than they did and have the benefit of experience.
Yeah, it was just a joke.
Younger coworkers are inevitably much better than I was at their age. How could they not be? Everything is better, and enlightenment is always just a few clicks away.
But the internet can’t teach you everything. Like when to give up and try a different strategy. Or that there might be different strategies to even try!
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#166I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
I’m a CEO now. An employee who’s older than me looks up to me as knowing more, more about Xmx tuning, coredumps, AWS dogfighting, SQL data models and so on. This is so wrong. My job is mostly HR, presales and lawyers now, so by the sheer time he spends on tech, he’s much better than me, and I don’t know what I’m doing with my strategy orientations.
We all feel like that image of a dog in front of a computer with the subtitle “I haz no idea what I’m doing.” Some of us manage JVMs, some others are CEOs, no-one know what they’re doing, but we have a world to govern.
Some of us have countries and nuclear weapons to govern…
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#167Tendons. Once beautiful, stretchy creatures that probably now resemble a curmudgeon being asked to be nice to a neighbor. Been playing soccer with my soccer mad 8 yr old. I too was that guy. Brings me back and I am so much better at technique now but boy oh boy does my hip and lower back hurt the next day!!!
> lower back hurt the next day "Next day" makes me think it's just DOMS.
My MRI on my hip and lower lumbar would tell you other wise.
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#168Tendons. Once beautiful, stretchy creatures that probably now resemble a curmudgeon being asked to be nice to a neighbor. Been playing soccer with my soccer mad 8 yr old. I too was that guy. Brings me back and I am so much better at technique now but boy oh boy does my hip and lower back hurt the next day!!!
One of my favourite stories is "A piece of Steak" by Jack London. It is about an old boxer who must win against a younger boxer to feed himself and his family but eventually loses because "Youth will be served" - https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/PieSte.sht... Some quotes: It was to be expected. It was the way of Youth, expending its splendor and excellence in wild insurgence and furious onslaught, ov…
He knew Youth now that it was no longer his.
Brilliant.
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#169I wonder if others here found their mental age aging more rapidly after certain life events? The wake of aging parents transitioning (death, stroke/care home) has without doubt accelerated my mental age, which in turn has changed what I'd call my horizon. When younger and prior to said events, the horizon was far away; time enough for everything/anything. Not so much anymore, much greater sense of uncertainty.
I feel that after kid was born. Chronic sleep deprivation and depression are the reasons. Not sure when will nd hopefully not too long.
About 18 years.
Re: The gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
#170I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing. The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything. But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
That must be it..