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Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
241–250 of 438 posts
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#242>Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? Yes, absolutely!
I've reached a age where I have to answer "define young". Early thirties is weird. All the people I respect and learn from are still older than me, but not old old.
Hey, 30s is the new 20s, and so on.
I'm in the same boat and I definitely still feel young. I mean, I'm fundamentally unchanged from when I was 16, and still like the same stuff like video games, computers, and so on. I have also always looked kinda young, which probably allowed me to propagate my youth until very recently. The biggest change I've noticed is not anything internal to me but how other people act around me; they talk to me like I'm an adult (which can be either good or bad depending on the situation), and the cashiers at the stores have stopped asking for an ID when I buy liquor (before 30 they still did!). Also, people don't give unsolicited advice as much as they used to; I suppose they think I know what I'm doing or don't care. This is definitely bad, because my modus operandi for life has always been to try weird stuff my own way and count on other people to stop me if I'm doing something completely stupid.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took the same path and came to the same realization, yet my current architect role is still nothing but meetings. Ugh.
Me, on the other hand, long to be an architect so that I can influence some technical decisions. Grass is always greener.
Dont be the architect be the guy who tells the architect what to do. Because they are too busy in meetings.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#244Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets very difficult. I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the problems at home, etc. when they…
Hmm, interesting. I'm 39 and used to have amazing flow sessions in late 20s and early 30s but not seeing them much anymore. I can't tell if it's because of stresses of life or simply because I don't have enough time (with 3 young kids) to allow myself to fall into a state of flow. I really hope it's not stresses or my brain changing because I really valued those periods of focus.
No kids here, but similar in that I remember sessions of long focus, and being able to do them repeatedly, for multiple days in a row. I typically can't do that as much now. Perhaps more to the point, I can't do them on demand. I do still have periods of 'focused flow', and they're great, but they just 'happen'. But... I never could just turn them on/off in the past either - they just happened far more frequently.
I predict you'll have more, just not as frequently as you used to. :)
FWIW, many of the things I used to have to spend long periods of focus on are now simple/common libraries that just didn't exist 30 years ago. Or, if they existed, there wasn't any convenient way of discovering them. So I find my productivity is still comparatively high, even with fewer number of flow states.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#246I find it surprising (in a good way) the author could be a programmer for 26 years at Apple. A lot of corporate places I've worked at are always pushing you to progress in to leadership positions; if you aren't moving upwards then you are "managed out" which I always find really sad, the idea that simply being good at your job is now no longer enough. Good on Apple if they don't follow this type of thinking.
An experienced programmer may not be able to write a lot of code faster than an intermediate programmer, but will know to NOT write code or waste time on things they know (from experience) are not required, or desirable... and focus on those things that really matter. This is worth so much for a company. Developers in the middle of their careers are dangerous: they can achieve a lot, but they can easily veer off on a…
One of my mantras that I picked up as I moved into a more senior level is “the fastest and easiest to maintain code is the code you don’t have to write at all”. Knowing when and what to write is as much a skill as writing the code in the first place.
Also, Apple, presumably being a very siloed organization, probably benefits more from tribal knowledge of the elders more than your typical organization.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are special and unique, that is why we were chosen not them.
I'm guessing the same story was told 600 years ago in Spain: "My father, an Inquisitor himself, told me of the time when the Grand Inquisitor promoted him. Ordinary priests are a dime a dozen, the great man said, but it takes special skill to be an Inquisitor. And that's why you never let them go back to the pulpit when you do find a good one."
Nobody expects the technical inquisition!
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have known programmers who don't know how a float is represented in memory. I just can't comprehend how they can gloss over basics like that.
And why is that necessary knowledge? Don't get me wrong, once you go down to embedded you sometimes do need to know and sometimes it just improves your understanding (and it's kinda cool anyway), but if you do high-level work, perhaps web work, all you need to know is the abstract interface of floats as a data type. What operations you can do, what is guaranteed about the result of those operations (loss of precision…
because you would know not to represent money as a float in any sort of serious system
or any other value where you have repeated calculations that would introduce errors
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
To even ask is ridiculous.
As a current undergraduate, programming for fun is ubiquitous in my peers. Surprises me also that the author has to ask.
I interview a lot of students for co-op roles. Almost none seem to program outside of assignments -- or even show an interest in programming outside of assignments. We use that as a weeding-out criteria. Some terms we don't hire any students because we need programmers, not warm bodies looking for money in a hot field.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I’m conditioned to have reduced respect for managers because in my experience they are former devs who were “promoted” out of touching the code. As a result, when they offer technical advice, it’s bad technical advice, or at best merely “unhelpful”, usually because it’s obvious (e.g. “did you try {first thing I tried}?” I pose that such people shouldn’t be devs or managers, but “manager” is a role that tends…
Those kinds of managers may not be coders but assuming they are actually good at managing (and know their limitations), they play an important role. It’s important to respect that other people are bringing different things to the table. Everyone’s got different strengths and weaknesses.
> Those kinds of managers may not be coders but assuming they are actually good at managing (and know their limitations), they play an important role.
What role is that?