71–80 of 133 posts
Obvious response: the programmers whose skills declined over time stopped being programmers. Selection bias, in other words. Apparently the study didn't take this into account? Edit: I'd love for this study to be meaningful, as I'm in my 30s. But it doesn't seem to be.
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"I cost as much as two junior programmers, but I can do things that two junior programmers can't do" Love it. I'm about the same place in my career, and I completely agree.
This reminds me of a conversation with an old friend... a pic of the two of us when I was 20 or so appeared on Facebook, and he asked that if 20 year old me met today's me, what would surprise him most? I replied that it would be how today's me kept calling 20 year old me "dumbass".
If only I had listened to my mother... But, noooo! I was almost 30, and my advanced age meant that I (thought that I) knew it all...
Here I am, almost 50, and I still don't know nearly as much as I thought I did.
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LOL ... I am old! I learned MVC developing MFC apps back in the 90s!!
I resemble that remark... I'm also old. I was writing RDBMS in dBase, compiled with Clipper, on MS-DOS, in the early 1990's, when I was about 30 years of age. (I was the "old guy" 20 years ago) Wow! The decades just keep passing by with increasing relevant speed.
I tell the younger guys that before IDE's and flat memory models were around, when you programmed, you went looking to buy three things.
1. Language/Compiler 2. Linker 3. Editor
And you will spend just as much time in the linker file (segmented memory back then) as you did coding.
The newer tools are just light years ahead of where they started back then. Its one area I will never look back at and wish it was still around.
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…
I wonder how much the preference for youth has to do with the fact that younger workers are (1) generally cheaper and (2) more open to working longer hours since they are less likely to have families and more likely to be looking to make an impression.
If you're 20 with no family, no mortgage, etc. you sign up with Zuckerberg to 'change the world,' with little concern over whether it crashes and burns.
I think that equation artificially pumps up the pop culture relation between youth and doing great things at new startups (never mind the rarely told stories of failure and misery that can go with crashing and burning). Leading to a false conclusion that youth is superior at things like programming / engineering / innovation.
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> I think it's easier for a young developer to focus laser-like on one thing for a long time. Or at least as long he/she isn't distracted by the next shiny new thing.
I believe research (sorry no link) is showing that older people tend to actually have much better focus than younger people, and better memory of what they were focusing on (in the absence of actual neurological problems, e.g., Alzheimers).
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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.
What I meant was that Struts wasn't the first mention of MVC in relation to web apps - lots of people were rolling their own frameworks in 2000/2001 and MVC was a common buzzword. As most developers in those days hadn't started with web apps it wasn't surprising that the term MVC was used - e.g. we were writing MVC C++ wrappers for simulations in 93/94 and Java MVC simulations in applets from '95.
But a 2000-2001 handrolled MVC framework does not qualify as "pre-Struts".
To use an easy example: who do I want on my team, John Carmack (42), or some 19 year old kid that is working on his first engine (and is likely to stumble over a million landmines due to lack of experience)? Easy choice, I'll take the ridiculously vast experience and refined skillset.
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…
I wonder how much the preference for youth has to do with the fact that younger workers are (1) generally cheaper and (2) more open to working longer hours since they are less likely to have families and more likely to be looking to make an impression.