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You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

nytimes.com

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Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#231

Post by technofiend »

dijit wrote: post #2

I don't see many old sysadmins in companies I've worked in. Even fewer older developers, I have a slight worry that this career path has an affinity for youth- which I won't have for much longer. So this is disheartening to read.

If you want to talk front-line production support, dealing with extremely time critical issues whilst remaining calm sysadmins then they skew 35+ where I work. We need guys who can handle the pressure. They're also the guys asking me for lab servers and training so they can keep up with what's coming next. Some people just enjoy the job and learning new things.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#232

Post by mark-r »

ourmandave wrote: post #34
hirundo wrote: post #8

I'm a grey beard who applied to a company specifically advertising for young developers. Got the job without mentioning my vintage. That was six years ago and they still haven't seen my face. I waited a while to gently break the news to them. If you're a technological senior citizen remote work is your friend.

Ah, "Grey beard". The term Microsoft used to separate the old from the young at a conference when they first introduced the .NET framework. Classic "old bad, good new" sales. As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc." Yes I remember. Because it was yesterday just before I came to your conference! I still went home and started learning what the hell XML was though. =(

They prefer the young ones, because it's easier to get them to swallow the BS. They'll play the "fire and motion" game [1] with gusto.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#234

Post by flukus »

themartorana wrote: post #123
douche wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebForms can die in a fire, and thankfully has, for the most part, but WinForms is still plenty good enough for cranking out quick and dirty tools. Maybe I'm old, or it's just because I started out in high school doing VB6 forms applications, but I still prefer it unless I have a good reason, over WPF. WinForms is also a pretty thin layer over Win32 controls, as well, so if you have to switch between .Net and native…

WebForms changed the game. ASP was a sub-subset of VB, but WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. I had never felt such power and freedom programming for the web. Yes, some people would put humongous data structures in view state, and yes, more-better solutions have arisen, but WebForms deserves your respect!

> WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time.

And that is why it can go die in a fire!

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#235

Post by mahyarm »

hdkmraf wrote: post #176
mahyarm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you want kids, and you don't want them to grow up in Colombia or the Phillippines.

What's wrong with Philippines? I have several friends living and making families in Philippines, and been there a few times. I would prefer my kids growing up there than in most western "first world" countries. Things are more chaotic yet strangely more relaxed, people on average have a much higher breaking point too. About Colombia, Colombian friends tell me is not a bad life either.

It's nothing specific to PH. You have things like entire families living on the streets, more crime, poverty, corruption & ignorance. Growing up in the typical SEA public school isn't good from an education and safety standpoint.

While growing up somewhere like the typical Canadian, Singaporean or German school system and environment is significantly safer and healthier.

The USA is a shit show with it being the 3rd world in some schools, and being pretty much a public school with private school levels of education & pressure.

You can live the private international school, gated community and chauffeured life to shelter the kids from that, and then send them to a western university. Or a village life to avoid a lot of that, but it still isn't great.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#237

Post by flukus »

grogenaut wrote: post #102
aianus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you're a bank, or a big on-line retailer, or a company that sells enterprise software - a business where you or your customers push billions of dollars of business through a software system - you definitely do care. Funny, those companies have the least reliable, performant, and maintainable code.

citation needed

Experience. The worst horrors I've seen have been in the finance sector. I'm currently working on one where the developers don't know transactions exist. And millions of dollars of transactions daily are coordinated by users emailing inline csv files.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#239

Post by jimmywanger »

drtse4 wrote: post #214
jimmywanger wrote: post #91

A lot of older programmers seem to think they have 20 years of experience, when they only have the same year of experience 20 times. If you don't keep up to date and current, it's not ageism.

> A lot of older programmers seem to think they have 20 years of experience, when they only have the same year of experience 20 times. A lot of younger programmers seems to think they have 3 years of experience, when they only have the same month of experience 36 times. Experience is made up by the experiences you had, if you have never worked in a proper environment or never actually tried to improve your craft, yea…

I agree, a lot of younger programmers think they have 3 years experience when they've had the same month of experience 36 times.

And this is not a dig against old people per se. But it's the sunk cost fallacy.

If you've only been doing something for 3 years, and it's wrong, it's easier to convince them that it's wrong, vs. if you've been doing something for 20 years, it's a lot harder to convince somebody that they're doing it wrong.

Especially if they've been successful doing things their way for 20 years.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#240

Post by aianus »

flukus wrote: post #237
grogenaut wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

citation needed

Experience. The worst horrors I've seen have been in the finance sector. I'm currently working on one where the developers don't know transactions exist. And millions of dollars of transactions daily are coordinated by users emailing inline csv files.

I'll add an experience with a bank that could only accept ACH batches via ActiveX control in Internet Explorer.

Oh, and a brokerage that actively prevented password managers from pasting passwords into the login form.

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