Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time • Hacker News Board

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#111

Post by michaelochurch » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 10:07 PM UTC

There are a lot of badass older programmers in Real Technology, but VC-istan does seem to be a young man's game.

It's not that these people think older programmers are incompetent. A few of them do, but mostly, it's just brutal age-grading of peoples' careers. If you're a 45-year-old non-manager (never mind that you might not want to be a manager) they're afraid to have you around their 22-year-old, Red Bull-drinking brogrammers-- especially if you've done a couple startups and you're still not rich. Then the VC-istani founders definitely don't want you around because you might indicate to them that billion-dollar exits don't happen just because you're a nice guy.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#112

Post by hkmurakami » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 10:20 PM UTC

freyr wrote: post #99

GabrielF00 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These factors hold in any industry, though, so they're not sufficient to explain the preference for youth in the software industry.

Similarly, in any industry, older employees are more difficult to fire (you tend to open yourself up to discrimination suits)

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#113

Post by betterunix » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 10:40 PM UTC

lazyBilly wrote: post #104

I'm not old, per se, I'm probably at my peak marketability-- old enough that, if I were stupid, I would have washed out by now, young enough to be stereotypically perceived as vigorous. I can grow a nice lush beard and there's no gray in it yet. The only real doomsday issue I ever ran into with older programmers was an increasing unwillingness (in some) to add onto their stack. The good news is that after the third o…

"If you know C, a lisp variant (although I prefer an ML variant), and a decent scripting language (I learned perl first, but I sort of hate it), you're not likely to get surprised by much"

I think a person with that knowledge set might be surprised by this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_programming

New programming paradigms emerge over time, and force us to rethink our approaches to solving problems. I think the key is not learning many languages, but learning many paradigms, and becoming skilled in the use of one paradigm before moving on to the next. Learning several languages with the same approach to programming is not as useful as learning several languages with completely different approaches.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#114

Post by zafka » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 11:01 PM UTC

I was older when I started-36 year old freshly minted Computer Engineer. Dumb lucky enough to take the first offer I got from the folks I had been interning with. Siemens Communications in Boca, 1996.

            I was working with about a hundred engineers on a huge code base in an

arcane language (CHILL). I was able to learn Intel assembly to patch live systems, pretty good proprietary configuration management, and quite a bit about the Dilbert principle.

At that time, I worked with Old guys who were great, and old guys who were less proficient than me. One of my friends who was 22, came in and ran a project.

The bottom line is, if you were adept when you started, you most likely get better with age, if you just apply yourself a bit.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#115

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 11:23 PM UTC

api wrote: post #4

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…

Really like that coda, very familiar with folks who've crusted over and become curmudgeons and have also experienced young people so smart that their new imagining of the wheel will be much better than the status quo. I encourage folks to stay curious, ask questions, listen to the answers.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#116

Post by deleted_account » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 11:27 PM UTC

GabrielF00 wrote: post #32

api wrote: post #4

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.

Less experienced workers are typically cheaper because they're less productive. You may luck out hiring a super-productive, recent graduate on the cheap, but they'll quickly learn their worth.

Your second point sounds purely anecdotal. My experience has shown just the opposite; older developers with families are much more committed because...well...they have families to support.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#117

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 11:45 PM UTC

This idea deserves more than this short post, but, in my experience, developers who learned to program in the 80's are consistently better than those who grew within GUIs.

Either that, or I just communicate better with people my age ;-)

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#118

Post by coffeemug » Tue, Apr 30, 2013, 1:14 AM UTC

api wrote: post #4

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…

  You think of young people as a fresher version of ourselves. Young
  people don't know anything.
    -- Don Draper

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#119

Post by angersock » Tue, Apr 30, 2013, 1:35 AM UTC

voidlogic wrote: post #13

benjamincburns wrote: post #10

Hire an individual. Don't hire an old person or a young person or a guy or a girl or a... just.. don't. An individual at age 40 is generally more qualified than he or she was at age 25. However, absent of other context the fact that one individual is 25 and another is 40 has no bearing on the prediction of whether the one individual or the other is a better fit for a technical role. Go for the individual who can show…

Being at least an average coder is a prerequisite to leading a team of coders. A team lead that can't code is like an Army officer that can't pass his physical tests or clean his rifle. He will not have the respect of the rank and file. A team lead (as opposed to a project manager) that can't code is doomed. (Notice I don't mention language, a good programmer can be coding in something new within a week or maybe two…

Absolutely--however, there are issues with rockstar/lone-wolf devs.

My old boss was an amazing coder--dropped KLOCs like you wouldn't believe, very smart guy, and could debug damned near anything through sheer stubbornness. I respected his technical skill and learned a lot from him. :)

That said, leading a team is more than just being able to catch the ball when your subordinates drop--it's structuring things so that the balls are small enough and obvious enough that even a greenhorn can make useful progress, it's making a supportive environment and architecture that is able to be extended without your supervision.

You need to be more Tom West than Zed Shaw.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#120

Post by angersock » Tue, Apr 30, 2013, 1:38 AM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #64

jorgeleo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it has happen to me too. I have around 20 years in software development. Around 9 years ago... Me: We can abstract most of that data access with a simple table oriented orm. Not all of it, but a good 80%. Younger Developer: Nope, That is what record sets are for, it is right here in the Microsoft docs (pointing to the ado api) ... 5 years later, he had moved to a different company, and I received a phone call fr…

Your first younger developer sounds awesome. I've worked with people (some older, some younger) that refused to learn from their mistakes. All developers make mistakes -- "I built this because I was worried about X but I should have been worried about Y ." The problem is making the same mistakes over and over.

One of the few joys of life is discovering new things, and to lead a fulfilling life one must discover new wrong ways of doing things. :)