Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors • Hacker News Board

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#11

Post by sausagefeet » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

Radzell wrote: post #6

tgflynn wrote: post #2

Maybe this is why so much software these days looks like it was written by unsupervised youngsters. I just wasted a day trying to get ListView's to work in Android only to find out that, well, they don't work, so you need to use something else. Then it took me a couple of hours to essentially duplicate the ListView functionality, except a working version. The thing is developing a GUI framework isn't rocket science,…

It's not the youngster who are jobless is the older software engineers who never learned to learn new concepts. The older programmer to so much time to learn everything from algorithms , to cryptography, and things that are analytical they forget about learning new technologies. Yoru comment shows why older people have difficult getting jobs. It took you a day to understand how a listview work while a good young prog…

I think newer programmer's just work for less. There really isn't that much new under the sun in software engineering.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#12

Post by streptomycin » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

peppertree wrote: post #5

I guess Crockford better pack his bags and send himself to a retirement home. There are always going to be under qualified and over qualified candidates. Some people simply loose interest in their field after 20 years. What a load of over generalized garbage.

That's an absurd interpretation of the article. It never said everyone is out of the field by 40, just "most".

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#13

Post by unwind » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:46 PM UTC

I completely failed to parse the title of this article. I thought it was about some union-like action in which some set of software engineers will donate their salaries to some set of, supposedly, poor English majors.

The more I read, the more confused I got since it never seemed to get to the point: who are doing this? Heh. English is not my native language, which I guess this served as a good reminder of.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#14

Post by nirvana » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:46 PM UTC

Radzell wrote: post #6

tgflynn wrote: post #2

Maybe this is why so much software these days looks like it was written by unsupervised youngsters. I just wasted a day trying to get ListView's to work in Android only to find out that, well, they don't work, so you need to use something else. Then it took me a couple of hours to essentially duplicate the ListView functionality, except a working version. The thing is developing a GUI framework isn't rocket science,…

It's not the youngster who are jobless is the older software engineers who never learned to learn new concepts. The older programmer to so much time to learn everything from algorithms , to cryptography, and things that are analytical they forget about learning new technologies. Yoru comment shows why older people have difficult getting jobs. It took you a day to understand how a listview work while a good young prog…

> Yoru comment shows why older people have difficult getting jobs.

You make several assumptions about him that don't seem supported, but worse why make this personal?

> It took you a day to understand how a listview work while a good young programmer who understand technologies should be able to pick up any technology and understand it in a few weeks.

So, older people don't get jobs because it takes them a day to pick up what a young programmer can understand in a "few weeks"? Really?

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#15

Post by cageface » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:49 PM UTC

Radzell wrote: post #7

cageface wrote: post #4

Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. If this is really true then where do they all go? There's only so many seats for managers and architects.

How many 40 year old software programmers could there be the area of science has only been around 40 years.

A lot of modern jobs have only existed for Trust me, there are a lot of us.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#16

Post by hkarthik » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:49 PM UTC

The title initially made me angry, but there's a lot of truth in this post. The sad fact is that once you cross 35, the salary growth slows considerably for most engineers and you have to jump to management roles to make more, even if your output translates to more dollars.

Contrary to the article, I think people in Law and Finance go through the same thing, but they get about 10 years more than us. My friends in Finance can stay in technical roles well into their 30s while still making double what even a typical Software Engineering Manager would make. When they finally have to go into more managerial roles, their kids might be getting out of the house and their personal responsibilities are lower, so they can take less stressful roles, or even go into consulting and start traveling if they want to be more hands on.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#17

Post by zdw » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:50 PM UTC

eliben wrote: post #9

-- "Although the very term “coding” evokes an image of tedium" This is ridiculous.

Replace "coding" with "writing" and you'd describe most of my k-12 and undergraduate educational career.

Many people can't seem to grasp the differences in ways a computer could be used, and lump it all in with "data entry".

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#18

Post by jroseattle » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:50 PM UTC

Wow, what hogwash. I still don't see where the article connects the dots -- why, exactly, would I end up working for an English major?

As for the balance of the article, most of the finger-pointing to dead-end oblivion for 40+ programmers is that they're priced out of the market. While that may be true in some cases, it's certainly not a trend I'm seeing -- rather, the opposite.

Mostly, this article was written by someone who has no idea what programmers/developers/architects/engineers do with their time, nor why companies value them in those endeavors.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#19

Post by jwoah12 » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:51 PM UTC

sausagefeet wrote: post #11

Radzell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the youngster who are jobless is the older software engineers who never learned to learn new concepts. The older programmer to so much time to learn everything from algorithms , to cryptography, and things that are analytical they forget about learning new technologies. Yoru comment shows why older people have difficult getting jobs. It took you a day to understand how a listview work while a good young prog…

I think newer programmer's just work for less. There really isn't that much new under the sun in software engineering.

Really? And here I was thinking that my discipline was one of the most rapidly evolving on the planet...

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#20

Post by cageface » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:52 PM UTC

Radzell wrote: post #3

This seems like a very bad assessment of software engineering forgetting the cursial reason why older programmer have trouble finding job. The fact is that computer science is only really been a legitament profession for maybe 40-30 years. When it first was taught no one could of predicted the speed at which software engineering would become a dominate force in the world's economy nor seen how fast technology changes…

Just a tip: basic grammar and spelling contribute more to your long-term professional success than you might guess.