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Poll: How old are you?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How old are you?

#151

Post by [deleted] »

Udo wrote: post #59
rjh29 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you are well respected around here, but your ability to sound like a douche seems limitless too.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "ability to sound like a douche" or is that just a random personal attack? When I think about high-karma HN users with douchy tendencies edw519 is not someone who comes to mind. I mean, in any account exceeding a couple of hundred posts it's probably easy to find some less than stellar content, but I don't remember edw519 ever making a post as low as you just did.

[deleted]

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#152

Post by chubot »

stephencanon wrote: post #102
chubot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing is that software isn't math or music. In those fields you might peak at 26. Software is mathematical but it also requires a lot of judgement and experience. Consider that Guido van Rossum didn't even START working on Python (most popular language on HN) until age 35. From what I can see 30's and 40's is a sweet spot for a lot of programmers. It seems like a lot of startup founders are young, but I thin…

> In those fields you might peak at 26. This is oft-repeated, but I’ve never seen any actual evidence to support it. I know plenty of mathematicians who didn’t start doing their best work until they were in their 40s, and musicians who have only gotten better well into their 60s.

Yeah I should have qualified that... it's not even math or music, but rather particular subfields and a particular kind of person. 26 is too young too; I was taking that random number from the OP.

Galenson claims there is a human dimorphism between people (or at least artists) who peak young and old (summarized here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius.html)

Math, music, and chess do have the most child prodigies. It doesn't mean the converse is true, that older people are worse at them :)

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#153

Post by ibarrac »

alexvr wrote: post #60

At what age would you say you were smartest, if you have noticed any fluctuation? I hear you mental power peaks at about 22 and begins to decline after 26, but that's pretty depressing, and I don't want to believe it, so if you have experience to counter or confirm this, please share. If you have noticed any decline in "fluid intelligence," is it negligible? Does your wisdom and experience outweigh any mental decline…

I'm 46. I do agree that I felt smartest around 22-25, I was able to recall stuff quickly and think faster than now and absorb new information faster, but that's just raw calculating ability and short term memory. I have noticed over the years a slow decline, and now I feel about 10% less smart in that sense.

However, over the years I have gained a large array of mental tools, techniques and knowledge that have vastly expanded my abilities. I am a more competent programmer now, as well as a more rounded person. We will see if that holds up for another 10 years.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#154

Post by crb3 »

elboru wrote: post #37
jpdoctor wrote: post #11

God these types of polls make me feel like a geezer. Just in case any of you whippersnappers are wondering what it feels like to start hacking in your teens and continue (in one form or another) to be hacking into your late 40s: It is pretty much the same after the first cup of coffee in the morning. Where it differs is the lull in the afternoon makes me want to nap. (So I do.) The drag is that until I look in the mi…

Have you noticed any speed decrement in your learning curves (learning new languages or frameworks)?

No, what I (currently 64) have noticed is a swift reduction in unbroken-focus time. Unlike in my 20's and 30's, I have personal responsibilities, now, y'see.

We're not designed to preemptively multitask; I just crash my stack when I try. We can cooperatively multitask, but the context-switching has to planned ahead. Even then, interrupts are costly. Used to be there was nothing between me and putting in a sleepless weekend on a project except me and my fatigue, which enthusiasm overcame easily. Now I've got kids and elderly parents and they're not only interrupting, they're nonmaskable. Stack-crash, context-dump and a profound weariness from loss of momentum, next stop.

I love it when I can shove in the earplugs, unplug the phone and dive in on a new learning adventure -- I hunger for that, it's part of who I am. Those times when I can trust the world to handshake timeslices and mask interrupts are very rare these days, however. From the outside it might look like slower learning; from in here, it's that the learning seldom gets any runtime.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#156

Post by Cookingboy »

tomphoolery wrote: post #10
jypepin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea it was in the article about why working in a big company http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/33111/7-Reasons-Why-You...

What an awfully misinformed article. :(

Care to elaborate? From my personal experience (currently working for Google and used to work for a YC startup, also worked for a 80 person small company and another silicon valley giant), that article is almost dead on.

You really DO learn a lot when you have more smart people around you to learn from.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#160

Post by jackmaney »

rjh29 wrote: post #47
edw519 wrote: post #42

58, writing more code, having more fun, reaching more people, & making more $ than ever, all of which still seem limitless: edw519's Hacker Quality of Life | ?? | ** | ** | ** | ** | ** | ** | ** | ** | ** | ***** ------------------------------- 10 20 30 40 50 60

I know you are well respected around here, but your ability to sound like a douche seems limitless too.

Remind me, how many points of karma does it take to unlock the ability to downvote?
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