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Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

news.ncsu.edu

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Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#11

Post by kailuowang »

As long as the developer keeps curiosity and learning new software technologies rather than getting comfortable with the tool that he trusts to get things done, which, I think, is a stage which the majority of developers will reach one day. I am not sure if it's wiser to continue coding without the fun of learning new tricks (meaning when new tricks no longer interest you).

I think when that happens a real hacker will stop hacking code and start to hacking something else. That being said, I am sure there are hackers that never get tired of learning new tricks.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#12

Post by benjamincburns »

ap22213 wrote: post #2

Wow - is this what constitutes 'research' these days? Look at some data on stackoverflow.com as if it's a representative sample, and then make some general conclusions?

Indeed.

> They found that an individual’s reputation increases with age, at least into a user’s 40s.

I really hope that's some bad paraphrasing, because I take that to mean for user X at time T, rep(X, T1) <= rep(X, T2). Unless you're very actively malicious (for which you'll get banned) your reputation should never go down by a meaningful amount over time.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#13

Post by voidlogic »

benjamincburns wrote: post #10

Hire an individual. Don't hire an old person or a young person or a guy or a girl or a... just.. don't. An individual at age 40 is generally more qualified than he or she was at age 25. However, absent of other context the fact that one individual is 25 and another is 40 has no bearing on the prediction of whether the one individual or the other is a better fit for a technical role. Go for the individual who can show…

Being at least an average coder is a prerequisite to leading a team of coders.

A team lead that can't code is like an Army officer that can't pass his physical tests or clean his rifle. He will not have the respect of the rank and file. A team lead (as opposed to a project manager) that can't code is doomed.

(Notice I don't mention language, a good programmer can be coding in something new within a week or maybe two and after a couple of months should be completely fluent.)

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#14

Post by zwass »

Evbn wrote: post #8
cl8ton wrote: post #6

I am one of the older'ish programmers One day a young programmer flies into the office talking about the new MVC frameworks and how it would revolutionize how we write programs. He was mystified when I explained how MVC works to him without even looking at what framework he was ranting about. He asked how I knew? I told him it was invented at PARC in the 70's and I've used them starting in 1995 with the MFC C++ for d…

Wow, when kids don't even know that the latest fad was originally popularised by Apple , we have entered postmodern hipsterdom.

Are you referring to MVC in iOS programming? I would attribute the current popularity of MVC to Rails.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#15

Post by bhughes »

Evbn wrote: post #7
api wrote: post #4

The prevalence of discrimination toward extreme youth in the software industry is probably a historical artifact of the fact that it's a new industry, so for the most part young people were the ones who "got it." That being said, I think it cuts both ways. Both younger and older developers have advantages. Older developers tend to see pitfalls and avoid them better. They tend to have a more diverse skill set, better…

If your first premise is true, then only old people would have developed this prejudice, and the article's headline is false.

Except that prejudices aren't always developed so much as taught/learned. The standard trope that "the young folk get technology" is accepted as axiomatic, and passed down, regardless of actual experience.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#16

Post by nahname »

I am unaware of any technique that translates knowledge metrics into skill metrics. This leads me to question why no is discussing that this research is solely based on stackoverflow.

Knowledge != skill

To me, all this study proves is that people who have spent more time on the earth have accumulated more information, on average. Which should be completely unsurprising.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#17

Post by etjossem »

Dr. Murphy-Hill uses absolute StackOverflow reputation as the only metric. He demonstrates that older developers spend more time sharing knowledge than their younger counterparts, but I'm not sure about the jump to "skills improve over time."

I suspect high reputation on SO reflects (at best) either a developer's perceived confidence in her skills or her desire to share whatever knowledge she has! Perhaps the title should have been "older developers like teaching." Not as sexy, though.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#18

Post by Blinkky »

The problem with using stack overflow as your dataset is most of the programmers on the site are interested in expending their technical knowledge. So if 50% of "young" programmers are on stack overflow but only 20% of "old" programmers are on stack you get results that don't indicate the actual population. The only thing we can actually gather from the data is that with "programmers on stack overflow older is wiser."

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#19

Post by PaulHoule »

api wrote: post #4

The prevalence of discrimination toward extreme youth in the software industry is probably a historical artifact of the fact that it's a new industry, so for the most part young people were the ones who "got it." That being said, I think it cuts both ways. Both younger and older developers have advantages. Older developers tend to see pitfalls and avoid them better. They tend to have a more diverse skill set, better…

The best teams work to actively transfer the experience from senior people to junior.
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