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"By and large, programming is a young man’s game" As a middle-aged programmer who is a much better programmer now than I was when I was young, I'd argue with the article's initial premise.
It assumes that years of experience mean you shouldn't be programming. Which seems...odd to me.
"By and large, programming is a young man’s game" As a middle-aged programmer who is a much better programmer now than I was when I was young, I'd argue with the article's initial premise.
Agreed. It assumes that years of experience mean you shouldn't be programming. Which seems...odd to me.
Architecture requires experience. Writing the fastest quick sort in a given language is an exercise for fresh young brains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. It assumes that years of experience mean you shouldn't be programming. Which seems...odd to me.
Maybe the author understands programming as "writing lines of code", and not as "architecting software". Architecture requires experience. Writing the fastest quick sort in a given language is an exercise for fresh young brains.
I can't see the reasoning here. Surely it's a job for someone who has written previous sorting algorithms, understands the trade-offs between speed and memory, and understand the pitfalls that can be fallen into when sorting different kinds of data?
The first paragraph seems to imply that, to understand recursive algorithms, you need to be young. And rightly so, the software industry is not for old people. Did I get the argument right?
The military is a "young man's game." Most new recruits are 18. But the people in charge, who do the strategizing and so on, are not. It sounds to me like the article is suggesting another way for experienced programmers to be held in high esteem, not suggesting that old programmers are no good. So I honestly do not understand most of the criticisms of this article being posted here on HN. Maybe there is no real diff…
As a PhD holding computer scientist and practicing researcher, I cringe at the title "software scientist"....
"By and large, programming is a young man’s game" As a middle-aged programmer who is a much better programmer now than I was when I was young, I'd argue with the article's initial premise.
I don't think that's the angle the author was talking about.
He's actually saying this:
"By and large, programming (in terms in jobs/careers/economics) is a young man’s game"
The qualification I added in parentheses would be a fair reading based on his previous sentence: "...take a job as a software engineer."
Likewise, his 3 bullet points after the "young man's game" is about "jobs", not skill or intellect. Basically, it's about ageism in context of job slots.
Despite all the employment verbiage surrounding "young man", people are still misinterpreting it as:
"By and large, programming (in terms in intellectual ability) is a young man’s game"
Perhaps readers are too conditioned by the mathematician G.H. Hardy quote, "math is a young man's game"[1] in which he was talking about about intellectual output.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy#Hardy.27s_aphorisms
"By and large, programming is a young man’s game" As a middle-aged programmer who is a much better programmer now than I was when I was young, I'd argue with the article's initial premise.
> much better programmer now than I was when I was young, I don't think that's the angle the author was talking about. He's actually saying this: "By and large, programming (in terms in jobs/careers/economics) is a young man’s game" The qualification I added in parentheses would be a fair reading based on his previous sentence: "...take a job as a software engineer." Likewise, his 3 bullet points after the "young man…
The military is a "young man's game." Most new recruits are 18. But the people in charge, who do the strategizing and so on, are not. It sounds to me like the article is suggesting another way for experienced programmers to be held in high esteem, not suggesting that old programmers are no good. So I honestly do not understand most of the criticisms of this article being posted here on HN. Maybe there is no real diff…
You have older NCOs in the military as well as senior officers, but for the most part rank and seniority is a pyramid in the millitary; just like most hyper competitive dev shops...there are older people at the top, just much fewer of them than younger people...and where did the other people go who fell off the pyramid? As a PhD holding computer scientist and practicing researcher, I cringe at the title "software sci…
(In fact, I suspect none of them are that young -- but I don't know all the ages of, say, everyone on the leaderboard, so I can't assert that as fact. Edit: Also, not everyone that age here can rightly be called a programmer.)