Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

I've also been programming for 20+ years and it seems to me it's only getting better. To be fluent there really is a lot to learn that takes time. From learning how the whole operating system works on the lower level through all design patters and common pitfalls to mastering everyday tools (dvorak, zsh, vim etc.) that shorten the path between ideas and working code.

I know some coders in their 60s that just like you have a fresh mind and are still eager to learn new things.

I believe association with older people being less capable of mental task and creativity stems from how our society works (or rather worked). People used to do the same job, then become some grandpa with not much input or challenges to keep their brain active. It is quite well documented at this point[1] that when you keep challenging your brain there is not all that much degradation coming with age. It's just that as you get older it's becoming harder to present something really new to your brain - it will tend to view it through existing patterns and use shortcuts that you already have. That's why picking up some new language (not just programming lang) just for the sake of learning something new is a good idea (but what for? could be for fun - dopamine is a lot of fun)

* The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science - Norman Doidge ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Brain-That-Changes-Itself/dp/01431... ), great book

The article focuses on the fact that as programmers age past 30 their salaries grow but they have roughly the same skills. But that is not the main dynamic here. The main dynamic is that as a person's brain ages, it improves in some ways and gets worse in others. The improvement is that you have more depth and experience. The loss is that your brain gets slower and less flexible.

Unfortunately, in computer programming you will run out of experience and depth that you can accumulate after about 8-10 years of work (say ages 22 - 32). Every new technology is just a variant of the previous 999 technologies. But you still keep getting older every year, and incurring the downsides of getting older!

Compare this with, say, being a doctor. A doctor at 32 is just finishing residency, so he or she has just finished formal education. At 42, she has 10 years of experience, and a doctor with 10 years of experience is better than one fresh out of school. The doctor keeps getting better at 52 (20 years of experience) and 62 (30 years of experience).

The big picture is that computer programming is a field with low barriers to entry and where young people have a significant advantage. Staying in a field like that for the long run is going to lead to a brutish brutish existence. There are many posts here along the lines of "I'm 39 and still doing ok". That's beside the point, because in the future you will be 49, then 57, then 65. Remember, Social Security full retirement age is 67.

It doesn't make sense to wait until you are 40 to switch. Every career field accepts young people easier than old people, which means that the time to start planning your switch is today.

One needs to implement life long learning! We are working in a field where there is exponential growth in computing, networking and storage and what computers can do. The robot automation artificial intelligence age are coming! Ordering food will be automated, cooking food will be automated, the post office will be automated. Shopping will to a large extent be automated, there will be 3D models of your body captured by your cell phone or 3D scanner booth. When you enter the shopping mart of the future, the food will come to you, you will not pick it up unless you want to. Why use a shopping cart when you can have a robotic picker do the work for you?

That said I see different things in different people getting older. Some people like life long learning, they will not have an issue finding jobs. Some people stagnate in their internal development after college, they use the same programming languages and tools as they did several years back. They are probably more in danger of getting obsolete by new tech. I think there is danger in your career path if you stagnate as a growth as a person. This will get worse the older you get unless you change.

With years of experience you will also realize that there is fashion in programmer tool chains, it's not necessarily that Javascript is better than say Ruby or Python but it sure is in fashion. Same can be said about NoSQL tech such as MongoDB it is not per say better than sharded MySQL and Postgres but you should still learn it because your younger peers will like it. I like to learn new stuff so I follow along. This also covers fashion in Javascript libraries such as AngularJS and React, there will something greener in the library field down the line I'm sure of it.

Love to learn! If programming is anything like martial arts you will just get better and more skilled with age, take and go the new tech coming in.

My reading is that he wasn't laughing at her plan intentionally. Her plan was so bad that he thought she was joking, and he tried to be polite by laughing at the VP's joke.

There's nothing wrong with him. As I wrote above, as the brain ages, you get more experience and depth and foresight. The problem is that the decisions that use these abilities don't belong to programmers - they belong to managers (in this case the VP).

This is one of the main recipes for perennial frustration - be an older programmer trying to act like a manager from the bottom of the hierarchy.

I absolutely agree. Over the years I've worked with many sharp guys that are 50+ and their experience always commands massive respect from me. People who dismiss the more experienced segment of the workforce are, to me, absolutely, inexcusably incapable of critical thought. If all one sees the glitz of the young guys at TechCrunch Disrupt and concludes that they're the only talented devs out there, I want nothing to do with that person in a professional capacity, to put it plainly.