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Aging programmer

world.hey.com

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Re: Aging programmer

#341

Post by beej71 »

tayo42 wrote: post #316
beej71 wrote: post #94

I found I lost interest in vapid work. Programming is still fun, but it's a big challenge to find a job that is fulfilling. When I was younger, I'd work on whatever. Then everything started sounding like yet another get rich quick company, and is that what I was giving up my life for? Just to move little green pieces of paper around? The most appealing thing I'd seen recently was a company that wrote software to help…

What do you teach? Like computer science at a college? Or something else? How did you make the switch? Was thinking about somehow doing some casual teaching as a step back from a corporate programing career for a bit

Computer science. (I have a BS and MS.) I taught at a boot camp for a few years, and now teach full time at a state university.

I kinda fell into it. I wrote some guides that were popular, and the head of the program at this boot camp was copying my examples for content (I had placed the code examples in the public domain, so he was acting ethically, don't worry), and he stopped and thought, "I should call this guy." They were a startup and needed folks to teach. I had just left the company I cofounded and was drifting for a bit, so it was good timing.

The university is in the small town I live in (about 100k population) and I organized a tech meetup here, and met the head of the CS department that way. That ultimately led to me being hired recently.

For casual teaching, be a part timer. There are lots of night courses that need teaching.

Private boot camps should pay around $90/hr. Adjunct positions at universities probably pay about $1000/class/month. It's really not good money, but it's good experience. I taught a couple quarters as an adjunct at the university and the positive student reviews I gathered contributed to me getting the job, for sure.

Re: Aging programmer

#342

Post by YZF »

scarface74 wrote: post #338
YZF wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interview a lot of people and I ask all of them to write code (standard for our company). There's plenty of people that can talk about all sorts of stuff but can't code. Who do you hire to write software? Also do you want to work somewhere where software engineers can't write software? Do you want to work somewhere where the people doing the planning can't write software?

I keep hearing this like there are millions of experience developers that have spent an entire career fooling company after company without being able to code well enough to do your typical line of business CRUD app and let’s not fool ourselves. That’s all most of the 2.7 million developers are doing as far as coding. I’m not saying the jobs are simple just that the complexity is figuring out what to write, how to or…

We do a lot of stuff that's not one line CRUD. I've no interest in people that can only do that. And let's not fool ourselves, even in orgs where they do the most vanilla stick blocks together software work there's a few people that do most of the work and lots of others that do very little. The other part of this is that there aren't that many good people looking for a job, most of them have one most of the time and when they switch it's usually through their network of connections.

You're obviously the kind of person I'd want to hire ;) Why would you mind writing some code in an interview? I don't ask anything that requires memorizing your data structures and algorithms textbook. All I'm looking for is people that can "think in code" which in the population of job seekers isn't as common as you'd think.

Re: Aging programmer

#343

Post by throwaway858 »

indymike wrote: post #116
RockingGoodNite wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. I'm not quite at the same age and only play the guitar. Like the article author and where we differ, I am very skeptical of new technologies, if I can't find a use for it in my personal software projects without having to hold my nose, there's no way I will recommend it for work.

> People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people who don't like being a leader for lots of reasons... but every time I've promoted a reluctant leader it's been magical for that person and for their team. A lot of times the people that self-promote and like to be in charge should never, ever be given athority. > I am very skeptical of new techno…

> we've been re-inventing the same concepts in computing since the 1960s. I think a lot of the re-invention is really being driven by hardware capabilities, languages and fashion. We're seeing it with Rust right now

I often hear the argument that there is nothing really new in programming and that everything was already done in some way or other back in the 1960s.

I completely disagree with this and find it harmful. There is genuine innovation and new research happening in computer science all the time. The example you gave, the Rust language, is based on linear type theory that was first developed in the 1990s. Nothing like it existed in the 1960s and that is why it offers real improvement to software development.

Today, software development is slow, buggy, expensive and late. We owe it to ourselves to continue to research and search out ways to improve our craft. And this is happening. Newer programming languages and tools DO incorporate innovations from recent computer science research and are better for it. We should celebrate this rather than cynically pretend that all computer science research halted in 1969.

Re: Aging programmer

#344

Post by somenameforme »

mbrodersen wrote: post #280
somenameforme wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess is a primarily mental competition, but players at the top of the world tend to hit their peak at around 35 years old. Players can continue playing at an exceptionally high level until the end of their life, but on average there is a gradual downward slide from that peak. Magnus Carlsen, the current world champ and arguably strongest player of all time, has decided to simply stop defending his title (held since…

Chess is not programming. We have software that can beat any human chess player. We don’t have software that can beat even a mediocre software developer.

These sort of comparisons are rarely meaningful, of the way you seek to imply: We have software that can beat any human at calculating partial differential equations. We don't have software that can beat even a mediocre cat-picture-identifier at identifying cats.

Re: Aging programmer

#345

Post by iepathos »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #296
iepathos wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed people with computer science phd's from schools with good reputations that couldn't program worth a damn when it came to some simple algorithm and practical coding questions in person so, I don't have a lot of faith in certs/degrees for this.

Computer science PHD is to professional programming what a food science degree is to being a head chef: the wrong credential to rely on, even though it sounds related and is somewhat transferrable. It a small company not specialized in education and examinations can set a test and deduce if I am good enough to code, then this can be standardized. And there could be many certs: 1. can code, 2. can code c++, 3. underst…

I could see this being ok if the certs were retaken regularly. Passing a cert at one point in time doesn't mean you've retained all the knowledge that cert is suppose to assess after some time has passed. This is essentially what TripleByte does for its process to find good engineers for startups.

Re: Aging programmer

#346

Post by scarface74 »

YZF wrote: post #342
scarface74 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this like there are millions of experience developers that have spent an entire career fooling company after company without being able to code well enough to do your typical line of business CRUD app and let’s not fool ourselves. That’s all most of the 2.7 million developers are doing as far as coding. I’m not saying the jobs are simple just that the complexity is figuring out what to write, how to or…

We do a lot of stuff that's not one line CRUD. I've no interest in people that can only do that. And let's not fool ourselves, even in orgs where they do the most vanilla stick blocks together software work there's a few people that do most of the work and lots of others that do very little. The other part of this is that there aren't that many good people looking for a job, most of them have one most of the time and…

Don’t get me wrong. Back when I was C bit twiddling from 1999-2008, we had nothing but a compiler and no libraries besides the ones we wrote since our code had to compile across x86 PCs and a couple of mainframes. I had to implement most of the data structures myself.

I’ve had one coding interview in 25 years between 8 jobs. That one was in 2012. They had a Visual Studio IDE with skeleton code abs failing unit test and I had to make the unit tests pass as a pair programming exercise. I thought that was a very practical type of coding interview that I copied when I had to filter a bunch of contractors when I was a dev lead.

But now, if I leave my job at BigTech as a “cloud architect specializing in application modernization” - basically enterprise app dev/DevOps [sic], training, etc., before I retire, it will be at some startup looking for a more strategic role, even though I would be hands on.

It’s automatically a red flag about the job that I prefer if I’m not being asked about strategy and given a coding interview.

Re: Aging programmer

#347

Post by iepathos »

mike_ivanov wrote: post #243
iepathos wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed people with computer science phd's from schools with good reputations that couldn't program worth a damn when it came to some simple algorithm and practical coding questions in person so, I don't have a lot of faith in certs/degrees for this.

These types can't usually think clearly under pressure. Besides, answering coding questions is very, very different from inventing those algorithms. It's a completely different way of thinking. That's why.

I agree pressure can play a part, but thinking clearly under pressure can be a very important skill to assess in a candidate depending on your company. For a high growth startup, there is often a lot of pressure to deliver effective code quickly. I also think retention of knowledge plays a large part.

Re: Aging programmer

#348

Post by YZF »

scarface74 wrote: post #346
YZF wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do a lot of stuff that's not one line CRUD. I've no interest in people that can only do that. And let's not fool ourselves, even in orgs where they do the most vanilla stick blocks together software work there's a few people that do most of the work and lots of others that do very little. The other part of this is that there aren't that many good people looking for a job, most of them have one most of the time and…

Don’t get me wrong. Back when I was C bit twiddling from 1999-2008, we had nothing but a compiler and no libraries besides the ones we wrote since our code had to compile across x86 PCs and a couple of mainframes. I had to implement most of the data structures myself. I’ve had one coding interview in 25 years between 8 jobs. That one was in 2012. They had a Visual Studio IDE with skeleton code abs failing unit test a…

We do both but writing some code is a requirement. After you do that we talk (with the more senior people) about their approaches to solving bigger problems.

Re: Aging programmer

#349

Post by tayo42 »

beej71 wrote: post #341
tayo42 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you teach? Like computer science at a college? Or something else? How did you make the switch? Was thinking about somehow doing some casual teaching as a step back from a corporate programing career for a bit

Computer science. (I have a BS and MS.) I taught at a boot camp for a few years, and now teach full time at a state university. I kinda fell into it. I wrote some guides that were popular, and the head of the program at this boot camp was copying my examples for content (I had placed the code examples in the public domain, so he was acting ethically, don't worry), and he stopped and thought, "I should call this guy."…

> . I wrote some guides that were popular,

Lol I just noticed the user name. I've used what you've written in the past.

That's cool though, 90/hr a works out to a little more then my base rate at my last job so not bad. I don't have a bs let alone a master so I'd guess a university wouldn't want me to teach hah. Thanks!

Re: Aging programmer

#350

Post by kaidon »

indymike wrote: post #104

I'm just over 50. Here's ultimately what I think about aging and programming: Programming is fun. I enjoy it now, more than I ever have. Three times I've created software that has built a business and livelihood for others. That is super satisfying, and at the same time, usually the source of things that are not as fun as programming (taxes, accounting, lawyers, nasty people). When I run across other programmers my a…

> "they person that can't let the smallest mistake go un-punished"

Did you mean 'the' instead of 'they'? Did you do this on porpoise?

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