It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer. • Hacker News Board

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#11

Post by klochner » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:41 PM UTC

AdamTReineke wrote: post #3

cstuder wrote: post #2

What's up with the 48 year olds?

There are 148 of them, I'd wager there are a couple with super-high stats who throw off the average.

Also note the significant 34 y.o. bump from the legendary Jon Skeet [1]

   [1] http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#12

Post by jeffreymcmanus » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:43 PM UTC

Fargren wrote: post #5

Hardly seems like they get better with age, just more active in educating other developers. The quality of posts doesn't look related to age at all. As far as I can tell, that should be the parameter to measure if you are going to make any sort of induction about the quality of a dev from their SO profile. And obviously, the fact that this only takes data from SO means whatever the conclusions, they only hold true fo…

There is a strong correlation between being a good developer and your ability to effectively educate other developers.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#13

Post by kenjackson » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:44 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #7

I'm a little surprised to see that they provide more answers, but that they aren't of better quality. I would have expected experience to show more. Of course, we only know they are older, not that they have more years of experience.

I think its one of those things where the real issue is if you have an answer at all. Of those ppl that have answers the quality of answers, I'd expect to be similar (across a population).

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#14

Post by adamc » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:46 PM UTC

What this really shows is that developers get better at answering technical questions with age. There is probably _some_ correlation to development skill, but the data doesn't demonstrate that. I'd expect developers to know more things as they get older, and I wouldn't be surprised if they got better at answering questions. Not sure that makes them better at the development part.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#15

Post by mkn » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:53 PM UTC

KeyBoardG wrote: post #6

By looking at the Reputation by Age graph it looks more like there are just a few really good older developers. The rest probably are so out of touch they do not participate in developer communities such as Stack Overflow. In my experience it has been that older developers hold on to old coding habits that are today considered dangerous and are reluctant to change that.

The rest probably are so out of touch they do not participate in developer communities such as Stack Overflow.

If you're curious about the down-votes, it may be because the above quote is an example of the particular kind of bigotry commonly referred to as "ageism". For future reference, if you are ever in a management position, that kind of thing is actionable in a work environment. You could get your backside sued off, is what I mean, if you are found to have used that in a hiring decision, for example.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#16

Post by jimmarq » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:54 PM UTC

Maybe with coding, it's either up or out. Older developers who have better skills most likely enjoy what they are doing and are somewhat good at it. If they weren't, they would have left the profession, maybe to become project managers or some related position. It's not like you're always forced out of your position, it's just that when you look down the road, you can see that if you're not a great coder, it may be best to find something you're better at. A 25 year old coder may still be figuring out if that line of work is sustainable over the course of a career.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#17

Post by billswift » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:54 PM UTC

adamc wrote: post #14

What this really shows is that developers get better at answering technical questions with age. There is probably _some_ correlation to development skill, but the data doesn't demonstrate that. I'd expect developers to know more things as they get older, and I wouldn't be surprised if they got better at answering questions. Not sure that makes them better at the development part.

Since programming is a skill based on the technical information, and since practice/experience is even more important for skill development than for other types of learning, I would expect their abilities to be even better than predicted by a test of their knowledge.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#18

Post by gbelote » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:55 PM UTC

maresca wrote: post #10

My guess is that the older developers have more time to comment and follow up. Plenty of times I have looked for solutions on stackoverflow, but have been too busy to post responses because of looming deadlines. This is like saying my grandparents would make for better farmers because they spend their whole day on Farmville.

I don't think a 45-year-old developer has inherently more free time than a 25-year-old. Given that a 45-year-old is more likely to have a family than a 25-year-old, I'd expect them to have less free time.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#19

Post by coliveira » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:56 PM UTC

This analysis is completely wrong because the bell shaped curve is not measuring number of developers. It is measuring number of SO users. There are SO users that are not developers, and a lot of developers that are not SO users, so there is no valid conclusion that can be taken from these numbers about the general population of developers.

Re: It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

#20

Post by josegonzalez » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:56 PM UTC

Number of developers by age is likely inversely proportional to the growth in the industry. I'd also say people get into development at a later date in their lives - late 20s - because they started doing something else before making the jump - marketers, engineers, painters, physicists.