Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009) • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by navait » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #243

dan00 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big picture is that computer programming is a field with low barriers to entry and where young people have a significant advantage. Computer programming isn't just one field, there're several completely different fields. All what you said might be true for the web development field, where the technology at hand isn't really that hard and you apply more or less the same technology and knowledge for each web proj…

>>But there're several other fields where experience and knowledge are a lot harder to gain Factor in internet that statement isn't true anymore. The amount of knowledge on the net today is mind boggling. Its scary to imagine how much information has become cheap and easy to access these days. And no one knows where this is all heading. The jobs that require knowledge and experience hard to gain are already very few…

I temporarily worked in safety-critical software development. There's a lot of tools in that domain that simply aren't as googlable(read: expensive) and cannot be learned online.

Often, in these sort of situations, the field isn't even that visible. I certainly didn't know how extensive it was until I worked in it.

>>Wait until a 20 year old shows how it can be done fast and right.

I will applaud the 20 year old who somehow manages to disrupt the safe software industry, but I doubt it will ever happen.

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

#262

Post by vezzy-fnord » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #160

tomerbd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm still trying to figure out whether to learn ruby on rails or play2 scala for web development, what do you suggest?

Having worked with Ruby on Rails in the past and with Play2 and Scala currently, I think I can answer that. For your regular web app, both frameworks are mostly the same, both are boring - Rails is more productive for very common tasks, but Play2 is safer because of the underlying language (well, if you pick Scala, otherwise Java just stays in your way). Things get more interesting in Play2 when scalability or latenc…

In all honesty, I'd recommend the use of Erlang alongside a framework like Chicago Boss, N2O or Nitrogen over Play if you want the actor model concurrency, default asynchronicity and WebSocket support. It simply supports these ideas in a way that Scala cannot compete with, alongside its concurrent error handling, the OTP framework, location transparent distributed nodes out of the box, binary pattern matching and so forth. Issues of typing aside (success typing is still impressive), it is a much cleaner and more FP-focused language than Scala's chimera paradigm.

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

#263

Post by wongarsu » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

rndrnd wrote: post #251

overgard wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! I'm going to call bullshit on that. There are a lot of recycled technologies (especially in web), b…

Like the parent tried to explain, different fields (programming, law, medicine, etc) have different experience curves. There is definitely enough in programming to learn for 200 years, if we lived that long. It's just that when programming in area E, a 47 yo who learned A, B, C, D, and E does not have an advantage over a 32 yo who learned B, D, and E. But the 32 yo has the advantage of his youth. I also don't get all…

>It's just that when programming in area E, a 47 yo who learned A, B, C, D, and E does not have an advantage over a 32 yo who learned B, D, and E.

Then maybe task E is not the right task for the 47 year old? Maybe when building another accounting system it's enough to know all about accounting systems, but the closer you get to the cutting edge the more useful broad knowledge gets.

For example there is just about nobody with 5 years of experience in VR-technology, but if you have worked in a number of even slightly related fields in the last 20 years you probably can bring a lot to the table.

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

#264

Post by michaelochurch » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #210

michaelochurch wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't specialize in programming languages Agree and disagree. I think that learning the minutiae of a specific programming language might be an evolutionary dead end. I say "might be" because there are C++ engineers making $500k in HFT. Since we're both in the same city (Chicago) now, we both probably know some of them. C++ isn't dead yet, and it's not even close (but a mediocre C++ engineer is probably hosed). What…

Do you believe specializing in a programming language is a smart career move so long as you pick the right language?

I don't think it's ever wise to specialize in only a programming language, even if it's a really good one like Haskell. I think it's important to have a lot of language-agnostic knowledge in one's skill profile in addition to knowing at least one language very well.

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

#265

Post by wongarsu » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #243

dan00 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big picture is that computer programming is a field with low barriers to entry and where young people have a significant advantage. Computer programming isn't just one field, there're several completely different fields. All what you said might be true for the web development field, where the technology at hand isn't really that hard and you apply more or less the same technology and knowledge for each web proj…

>>But there're several other fields where experience and knowledge are a lot harder to gain Factor in internet that statement isn't true anymore. The amount of knowledge on the net today is mind boggling. Its scary to imagine how much information has become cheap and easy to access these days. And no one knows where this is all heading. The jobs that require knowledge and experience hard to gain are already very few…

The internet makes information easily available, but it doesn't always provide context. For example Hadoop is great for big data, but I trust the fourty-something year old more than the twenty-something year old to know when to ignore the current trend product and use stream processing instead.

And I'm saying that as a twenty-something.

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

#266

Post by rndrnd » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #263

rndrnd wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the parent tried to explain, different fields (programming, law, medicine, etc) have different experience curves. There is definitely enough in programming to learn for 200 years, if we lived that long. It's just that when programming in area E, a 47 yo who learned A, B, C, D, and E does not have an advantage over a 32 yo who learned B, D, and E. But the 32 yo has the advantage of his youth. I also don't get all…

>It's just that when programming in area E, a 47 yo who learned A, B, C, D, and E does not have an advantage over a 32 yo who learned B, D, and E. Then maybe task E is not the right task for the 47 year old? Maybe when building another accounting system it's enough to know all about accounting systems, but the closer you get to the cutting edge the more useful broad knowledge gets. For example there is just about nob…

Remember the comparison is not between 47 yo with experience vs 22 yo with no experience. It's 47 yo vs 32 yo - both have experience.

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

#267

Post by mahyarm » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #176

mahyarm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other 'sticks with what they know to a detriment' are devs that stick with SCMs such as svn or cvs or even rcs when things like git or mercurial are out there. Younger devs who do have experience with this stuck in their ways behaviors and it can be frustrating and they try to side step it by not engaging the older devs.

Other 'sticks with what they know to a detriment' are devs that stick with SCMs such as svn or cvs or even rcs when things like git or mercurial are out there. Don't mistake not buying the hype for sticking with something just because you know it. While there aren't a lot of reasons to favour RCS or CVS when Subversion exists, there are sensible reasons you might favour SVN over a DVCS for some projects.

It's been 10 years since git has been released, and in my personal case when this happened, there wasn't any good reason other than 'it's what I know'. The company started with SVN when git had been around for a while.

It's slowed down the company globally, prevents us from using various tools that don't have svn compatibility (like android's repo, gerrit or git's client side pre-commit hooks) and overall just been a relative pain the ass compared to git.

The very small edge cases that svn might be better at now did not apply to us. Notice I didn't say perforce, or google's custom solution in my example.

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

#268

Post by dennisgorelik » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #143

chx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually summarize this thusly: "I have already made the mistake you are about to make". It should be obvious the time savings would worth it to "rent" me. And I am months away from my 40th birthday.

It's funny you should say that. A few years ago, at a company whose name everyone here knows I, an old gray-hair, almost lost my full-time job for warning a VP that she was about to make a mistake I'd seen before. I honestly thought she was joking when she told me about the approach she was going to use to deal with a "hard deadline" of four months. I laughed along with her joke until, with a shock, we both realized…

You should quit working for her. Either transfer to another department or if it is not possible - transfer to another company.

There is almost no upside working anywhere near her. She would screw up every meaningful project and attach failure to professional reputations of everyone involved.

What was the approach she was trying to use to deal with a "hard deadline"?

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

#269

Post by ownagefool » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #256

ownagefool wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, you seem a tad upset. You should probably note my last sentence where I point out most of the better folks who I want to work with are older. My point was that simply being older doesn't make someone better, and that I'd rather train a junior than deal with a stubborn incompetent senior team mate. Unless you think the latter applies to you, you probably shouldn't be upset, I'm not generlising, I'm pointing…

"and that I'd rather train a junior than deal with a stubborn incompetent senior team mate" I was pointing out that the 'junior' often has more hidden costs than people realize. If you really are training someone - that's great, but I see far too little of that, and often just a hiring of the younger person either because they're perceived as cheaper, or a fear that the older person won't be a 'team player' ( sometim…

It's actually not a case of fearing there are people who are difficult to deal with, I have absolutly no doubt you've experienced people who are stuck in their ways have as many hidden costs as the junior. I've taken over from older devs who don't use version control, nor a dev environment, refuse to use frameworks or follow coding standards. Should we honestly believe they don't have hidden costs? Would you really rather deal with them than train a kid?

Either way, I'm only trying to counter the "old is good". I fully accept there are amazing older IT workers, just not that older is always better.

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

#270

Post by czep » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

siberianbear wrote: post #108

Afforess wrote: post #47

I see no one else has mentioned another, even more obvious solution. Retire . With the sky-high salaries it is possible to earn as a software engineer, it should be straightforward (not easy, but still straightforward nonetheless), to save enough to retire at the age of 40. After which, you can spend your remaining time as you see fit, working on personal projects or any other hobby that suits your fancy. This is the…

It's possible. I did it. I am 43 and I retired when I was 40. I lived frugally in Silicon Valley and saved and consistently invested more than half of my income. It was a decision I made when I was 23. I remember doing a spreadsheet at that time to plan it all out. This was back before there were good references on how to plan it out. Some of my assumptions were a bit off, but I got there in the end.

Yes but you must realize it can't work for everyone. Clearly you made some smart decisions that involved a lot of sacrifice to end up in this position, and I'm not denigrating that at all. But a) not everyone has the ability to make those sacrifices (child care, elder care, health emergencies, etc) and b) even following the same path as you did could lead to a different outcome. There is an element of luck that, again I'm not discounting your achievement, does factor into the outcome.

We need programming to be a real career. People shouldn't feel pushed out when they are in what in any other industry would be considered the prime of their career. This mentality is destructive not only for us but the economy as a whole.