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I would have hired Doug, but...

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Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#161

Post by fsk »

wwweston wrote: post #106
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

"Unlike Engelbart, I have re-tooled. I now work in JavaScript in the browser and on the server. I had to walk away from the codebase that I loved. I understood that the price of relevance is to give up fighting at some point and settle for a partial victory. I think I was right in the development environment I created. But right doesn't mean the world uses what you created." Yep. That's the key to staying relevant: c…

Something I've found as I've gotten older, though, is that I have a stronger and stronger sense of wasted time every time I have to learn a new way of doing the same thing . Particularly if the new way involves a bleeding edge leaky abstraction. Because every hour I spend investing in a new stack and its details is an hour I can't spend thinking about product-level details, can't spend learning more learning about or…

That is one of my biggest concerns. A lot of the new tools are just different, not better. But you're expected to know all of them.

It's also hard to predict what will be popular five years from now. I thought that using Javascript on the server was pants-on-head retarded, but it's very popular, with no signs of passing on.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#163

Post by marssaxman »

mark-r wrote: post #134
thinkmac wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, it is good that you like the things you do. at your age, we youngsters tend to expect you to be in the management level, not at individual contributor level. from time to time, i would see our team hiring engineer with gray hair and requiring special mechanical keyboard, and we all thought "mm.. interesting."

The only reason you're not demanding a mechanical keyboard yourself is that you're not old enough to have used one. They have a totally different feel that is more efficient for fast flawless typing. Not by a huge amount, but if you're in a position to specify your tools why would you not choose the best? I'll bet he asked for a big high-resolution monitor too, and you didn't even blink. Go ahead and aspire to manage…

Fast touch typist here and I can't say the transition away from mechanical keyboards had any impact on my speed. Shallow travel keys and minimal finger exertion are nice.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#164

Post by thearn4 »

ErikAugust wrote: post #34
intrasight wrote: post #6

When I was a young man, a slightly older associate told me that "programming is a trap". What he meant is that if you are relatively smart, you can get a CS degree, get good at it, and go earn a fantastic income right out of school. I heard the words. I understood the words. I agreed with the words. Even now, 30 years later, I keep asking "is this a trap that I choose to remain in?" I still love programming, but it i…

You should quit now, and try working a multitude of other jobs. Come back to us and see if your definition of 'trap' has changed, or expanded. Software engineering is such an entitled world, it is ridiculous. As someone who has seen the world of menial work, I will never, ever leave it. I feel blessed. You should too. You just don't know it.

I was a low level army grunt for several years before finishing college, and getting into R&D. I agree with your perspective 100%.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#165

Post by gcr »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #39
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me 3! 56, first prog job was in '87. Now I'm steadily employed in a dream job, working from home, writing mobile apps and exploring new "IoT" technologies. If this job ends, which all jobs do sooner or later, I'm hoping to starting my own company, finally, and ride that into retirement. But life continues to be an adventure and you never know what lies around the next bend in the road!!! Best of luck to you and to pe…

Let's make it an even 4! Just turned 50 yesterday. Wrote my first contract program in 1982 when I was 17. Today I teach teams how to rock-and-roll. I also keep coding, but mostly as a hobby. It has nothing to do with programming -- I simply have too many irons in the fire to do all of the things I love as much as I want to.

Happy birthday! :)

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#166

Post by lectrick »

bentcorner wrote: post #143
lectrick wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 43 and I do worry about this. But… not so much. Been programming since 1982 when I was 10... on a Commodore PET. I was instantly addicted, even though it was a green on black screen, needed to load code on a slow cassette-tape device, and was slow as heck. ;) You see, in this career you have to be willing to drop everything and learn a new thing. All the time. Make learning new things part of your career. My stra…

re: elixir: What do you think about golang or rust?

Rust seems like a fantastic candidate for a C++-layer replacement.

I went into my thoughts on Go here, a week or 2 ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9409803

I went into my thoughts on Elixir here, around the same time

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9428318

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#167

Post by vonmoltke »

_yosefk wrote: post #37
bentcorner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm coming to grasps with this too. I'm over 30 and have spent most of my life building large desktop applications in C/C++. I want to eventually work remote, and looking at what's out there, there are very few opportunities with someone with my skillset. It's all modern frameworks and languages. So, I'm spending some of my own time learning some of this stuff.

Embedded programming is much more stable wrt languages and (often non-existent) frameworks. Nice for C/C++ devs.

It's also a silo that can be hard to get out of and is very hard to get into, because all you do is C or C++ work and everyone wants C or C++ experts for their jobs.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#168

Post by sjolsen »

silverlake wrote: post #130
ams6110 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the thing that gets a bit discouraging at times is the feeling of riding a slow-motion merry-go-round. Every 10 years or so you see the same ideas start to come around again, only with some new paint and landscaping. I have found myself more than once thinking that learning about some new trendy buzzword is just ultimately a waste of time, since I will barely have mastered it before it's been replaced by the…

Most companies aren't using the trendy new languages and tools. The bulk of jobs today are for C++ ('83), Java ('95), Javascript ('95), Python ('91), and maybe C# (2000).

It's a shame, too, since C++14 is a far cry from 1983's C++ (or whatever version the majority of the segment of the industry which uses C++ is actually using), and the others are similar stories.

One the one hand, I suspect ams6110 was referring more to those things we give names like "pattern," "architecture," and "paradigm," maybe even "stack," "platform," or "library" than to languages. On the other, my suspicion may be wrong, and I'd agree with him about it if it were anyway; so little that's been developed in the world of programming languages recently is anything new, and what isn't is as often as not a poor reimagining of something Lisp or ML had figured out pretty damn well ages ago, thank you very much.

Still, though, progress has been made even on the mainstays, even if the industry hasn't quite caught on yet.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#169

Post by wslh »

michaelangerman wrote: post #19

I am 55 and have been programming computers since 1975 when I was 15 years old. Do the math, I have been programming now for 40 years. Recently, I had a conversation with someone else about this topic and I told them that I have never been so excited about my career, the field of computer science, and most importantly the opportunities that exist today in the field of technology. The excitement surrounding too many t…

> I have never been so excited about my career, the field of computer science, and most importantly the opportunities that exist today in the field of technology.

I am in the opposite side, I am also very excited about computer science so I focus now on sales and business development because I can earn much more than developing software. Now coding is a hobby again and a complementary knowledge to sales.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#170

Post by cheez »

wslh wrote: post #169
michaelangerman wrote: post #19

I am 55 and have been programming computers since 1975 when I was 15 years old. Do the math, I have been programming now for 40 years. Recently, I had a conversation with someone else about this topic and I told them that I have never been so excited about my career, the field of computer science, and most importantly the opportunities that exist today in the field of technology. The excitement surrounding too many t…

> I have never been so excited about my career, the field of computer science, and most importantly the opportunities that exist today in the field of technology. I am in the opposite side, I am also very excited about computer science so I focus now on sales and business development because I can earn much more than developing software. Now coding is a hobby again and a complementary knowledge to sales.

Interesting, how much can you make?
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