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Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

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Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#161

Post by iheartpotatoes »

scrollaway wrote: post #41
nlh wrote: post #29

I've met two deeply talented software engineering minds in my life, and they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: The first I met when I was in my mid-20s and he was about 17. Gifted kid, absolutely. He'd published a programming book (!) and could do things with JavaScript that, in 2001, nobody had even thought of doing until the mid 2010s. Totally undisciplined of course -- we hired him and he refused to follow an…

Same story here. The most talented engineers I know are either in their early 20s or in their late 40s/50s. Of course it's for different reasons. Something many people don't want to admit is that a lot of talent comes from practice and experience, and someone in their 40s is much more likely to have 20+ years of experience than someone in their 20s. The early-20s geniuses I know are talented for different reasons. Th…

Younger programmers: know less, but are more flexible learning new things; broad yet shallow

Older programmers: tired of having to be "flexible" for decades; extremely deep knowledge, siloed

Most clever programmer I saw was a guy in his 40's (in early 2000). He was a layout engineer who wrote a PowerPoint+VBA design rule checker for extremely rapid prototyping of layout ideas.

Most clever team I met was a group of 30 somethings (mid-1990s) who wrote a CPU architectural simulator that was essentially a tweak of the first linux kernel.

Most "how the fuck did you do that" was a 25 year old out of Russia who wrote a Windows 10 hack for hooking system calls for performance monitoring. He did things Windows docs said you couldn't do. All un-commented assembly. Glad I left before I had to own it!

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#162

Post by ezoe »

nlh wrote: post #29

I've met two deeply talented software engineering minds in my life, and they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: The first I met when I was in my mid-20s and he was about 17. Gifted kid, absolutely. He'd published a programming book (!) and could do things with JavaScript that, in 2001, nobody had even thought of doing until the mid 2010s. Totally undisciplined of course -- we hired him and he refused to follow an…

Totally same experience.

Young gifted hackers and old experienced veterans.

There aren't much to say about old veterans. They write bullet-proof code. They are stable. They are good.

The young hackers... they are so unstable. Their code is unmaintainable. But they can achieve things we thought impossible or too difficult to even consider implementing it.

They are usually mentally unstable. They usually suffers multiple mental issues like sleep disorders, development disabilities, bi-polar disorders, ADHD etc.

Looking at them, they are like burning their life to achieve short-term gain.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#163

Post by ralphc »

headalgorithm wrote: post #51
nlh wrote: post #29

I've met two deeply talented software engineering minds in my life, and they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: The first I met when I was in my mid-20s and he was about 17. Gifted kid, absolutely. He'd published a programming book (!) and could do things with JavaScript that, in 2001, nobody had even thought of doing until the mid 2010s. Totally undisciplined of course -- we hired him and he refused to follow an…

It would be interesting to know what the 50-something was like when they were younger. Did they have the characteristics of the 20-something rock star.

I'm a 50-something, recently retired but still programming for fun and non-profits. "Rock star" meant something different 30 years ago. Less was expected of you, but also the tools and technologies weren't there to help you. No databases in the cloud, no google or stackoverflow. You had to wait for books to come in and hope they had the information you needed, otherwise you took a week and figured it out for yourself. My very first job, my IBM PC clone had two floppies. My code was on drive b:. I would put the editor floppy in drive a:, edit, then put in the compiler floppy, then the linker floppy. Programming in C, manual memory management. I was good then, I'm good now. Lessons learned then no doubt honed my skills in general, but I don't know if I "use" those skills nowadays.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#164

Post by ndnxhs »

tekkk wrote: post #65
ndnxhs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do these people even go to uni when its such a waste of time. I went to uni for a year and learned absolutely nothing because it was all so incredibly basic that its only useful if you don't know how to learn on your own.

Some people use the university not only as an opportunity to learn but to nurture friendships and connections that last for life. You are only young once, why you have to hurry to jump into the rat race? Especially someone whose identity is so tied with their ability to "be a good programmer" it might be a great chance to digest new perspectives towards life. Also if the bachelor level courses felt too easy you shoul…

I wasn't aware that there was any way to skip the basic stuff.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#165

Post by oldmancoyote »

Dowwie wrote: post #84
oldmancoyote wrote: post #4

I actually haven't met many being a scientific programmer in a science with little need for programming. So, I guess I'm the most talented. I was at my best in my 40's, but at 72 I'm still very good, but slow.

What science has little need for programming these days?

It's a comparative thing, but I worked as a geologist/programmer. Nobody can avoid using computers. They are just so damn useful.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#166

Post by ryandrake »

rotten wrote: post #86
spinach wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That begs the question then, what happens to these early-20s geniuses once they are late 20s/30s?

Life gets in the way for a while: Kids. Spouse/partner. House. Hobbies. Cynicism. Burnout. Health. Elder care. Then things settle. You work through the life thing, and in your 50's you get a fresh perspective and new energy.

All of the above, plus, at most (non-FAANG) tech companies, as an individual contributor your salary will plateau when you’re around 30-35. During your 20s you’ll get used to double digit pay raises and then all of a sudden that will stop. Even changing jobs won’t give you more than a 1-2% bump as some point.

I’ve had that surreal “we really want you to stay but we can’t give you a raise” conversation too many times in my career.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#167

Post by ryandrake »

BigFish12 wrote: post #159
drugme wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

being an asshole doesn't make you less of an engineer. The issue wasn't that he was an "asshole"; but that he was undisciplined .

He was undisciplined when it came to listening to authority. He was not undisciplined for learning or for solving hard problems, which is what make you a good engineer.

I think the missing word here is “insubordinate”.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#168

Post by thecanman »

ArrayList wrote: post #147
elbrian wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't police other peoples' speech.

Thanks Mom.

This isn't Reddit. Please read the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Specifically, "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. "

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#169

Post by chatmasta »

JamesBarney wrote: post #152
ThirdFoundation wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if you could give me a little advice as to what I should focus on to more specialize in the Microsoft stack? I'm on a bit of an unusual track into software engineering, having started in finance and first teaching myself to code via VBA and SQL. That coding led to me getting a second degree in computer science, which I'll be finishing this year (and I now know way too much about VBA). All that of that…

I'd be familiar with c# but it's an easy language, and there are tons of devs with c# experience. But I'd mainly focus on JavaScript/TypeScript. And if you're about to graduate then focus really heavily on react or angular. Microsoft shops are drowning in .net talent/experience but are starving for good front end devs with deep angular or react experience. And I wouldn't bother with powershell at all, unless you have…

This makes sense. MS office is moving to the “cloud” and extensions are now programmed in JavaScript or TypeScript (also a Microsoft project).

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#170

Post by legulere »

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #123
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a specialist who is currently looking for a job, HR generally only seeks generalists. Almost all interview loops that have been standardized seriously prefer generalists. The mold doesn’t fit anyone and are just generic programming/system design questions that do not evaluate specialist skills and experience at all. PL specialists are also pretty good generalists. I mean, what hasn’t Jeff Dean done and do people e…

PL specialists are also pretty good generalists. It has also been my experience that people with a PL / compiler background are often great generalists. At Google I can think of at least the following: Jeff Dean, Fergus Henderson, Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Ben Gomes, David Stoutamire, David Bailey, Urs Hoelzle, Hal Abelson, Martin Abadi, Peter Norvig, Sanjay Ghemawat. There are more but can't think of them off the top…

Or 4.: Most problems are about transforming A to B like in a compiler. Many of the techniques in compilers are also applicable elsewhere.
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