Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ncsu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 133 posts

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

#51

Post by huherto »

btilly wrote: post #42
arethuza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And MVC was talked about a lot as a design pattern for Web apps before Struts was started - I remember we rolled our own rather nifty one in 2001 or so and failed to get our execs to open source it so it died when the team withered away after our acquisition.

Struts was released in 2000, so it predates yours. However I know people who were using MVC as a design pattern in Perl in the 90s.

MVC comes from the Smalltalk world. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ModelViewControllerHistory

But it is quite different from web MVC that was popular with web frameworks like Struts.

I haven't looked at the more recent javascript frameworks, but my intuition tells me that they are probably going back to the original MVC pattern. (Observer pattern to notify views when model changes)

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

#52

Post by yxhuvud »

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…

I don't understand how anyone could think hiring a lead anything and least of all architect, that didn't have relevant work experience.

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

#53

Post by avenger123 »

zmanian wrote: post #30

I've found a wealth of talent by swimming against the Silicon Valley tide of favoring youth. There is an annoying pathology at work though. During the 90's most experienced developers were incentivised to move into management or sales roles. Many of the management/sales roles these developers moved into have disappeared. There is a population of older software developers who kept coding through the late 90's and earl…

I believe this focus on favoring youth is very much a Silicon Valley/tech startup bias.

I primarily work in the Energy sector and there is no definite bias towards hiring young.

I would suspect this generally also applies to other industries.

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

#54

Post by throwaway1979 »

I must admit ... I am in awe of the programming prowess of some of the older devs I work with - we're talking about people aged 55+! One guy I work with seems to actually know what the bazillion options in Eclipse do. You can only do this with experience in my book.

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

#55

Post by throwaway1979 »

btilly wrote: post #22
zwass wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There were lots of MVC frameworks for web development that predated Rails. For example Struts.

LOL ... I am old! I learned MVC developing MFC apps back in the 90s!!

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

#56

Post by moron4hire »

It is fundamentally hard to find good developers, but that is not because there are so few good developers, it is because there are so many bad developers.

I meet great programmers all the time, but I never see them on job interview. The reason is because good developers do not apply directly to jobs. They find out about positions through their friends and move through their network, not through recruiters.

And it's the correct way to do things. You're never going to be able to learn who a person is, the whole person, from a resume and a battery of interviews. You'll learn who they have groomed themselves to look like, which won't be a real person.

The answer to all the problems with hiring--not enough female candidates, not enough skilled candidates, etc.--is all entirely due to the hirer not socializing enough with the types of people he or she wants for their position. If you don't know the people you want, then you won't find them.

In short, treat people like people, not equipment. The noun in HR is "resources" not "human".

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

#57

Post by ww520 »

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…

There is indeed very little new under the sun. A lot of stuff are just repackaging of old ideas. I remembered reading the Self language paper and thought it was cool as heck, objects all the way, no classes. Then later Javascript came along with its prototype and people thought it's the shit. I was like, whatever, it has been done before.

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

#59

Post by btilly »

huherto wrote: post #51
btilly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Struts was released in 2000, so it predates yours. However I know people who were using MVC as a design pattern in Perl in the 90s.

MVC comes from the Smalltalk world. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ModelViewControllerHistory But it is quite different from web MVC that was popular with web frameworks like Struts. I haven't looked at the more recent javascript frameworks, but my intuition tells me that they are probably going back to the original MVC pattern. (Observer pattern to notify views when model changes)

Said history was referred to in the top level comment that started this discussion.

I've had as a low priority idea for a few years implementing a web MVC framework that is somewhat closer to the original inspiration - not because it makes sense for generating HTML (though it actually works quite well for that) - but because it would reduce the impedance mismatch with a client-side library using the original MVC pattern.

I have not actually done this for a number of reasons. The top one being that when you scratch an itch that you think someone else should have, it is much less fun and likely to work right than when you scratch your own itch. But it still bugs me that nobody has written one that works like I think it should...

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

#60

Post by a-priori »

bhughes wrote: post #15
Evbn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The slightly different statement "young folk use technology the best" is closer to the truth. Just the other day I was saw my cousin's toddler pick up her father's iPhone, unlock it, and pick the game she wanted to play. Even at 4 years of age, she's a decent user of technology.

But they don't necessarily understand the technology they're using. For example, teenagers these days are addicted to their cell phones, and texting is such an integral part of their social lives that taking away their cell is tantamount to locking them in a room for all the social isolation it causes.

They are expert users of technology, yet they don't necessarily understand the technology they use. As an example, if you give a teenager a URL for a page with information they need, instead of typing/copy-pasting it into the address bar, most will type 'google' into the address bar, put the URL into the search box, and click the first link.

Just being a highly proficient user doesn't make you an expert. Young folk are highly proficient users of technology, but they're not experts unless they've deliberately learned how the technology works.

Post reply on HN