I don't think he was retired.
Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
351–360 of 555 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Programming is the thing you love the most and if it was 100% up to you what to do with your time you’d still do it? I mean I don’t hate my job but damn I’d just sit in front of the TV and go for walks if that was an option.
Personally I love programming, among other things that people might regard as similar to programming. The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Solving technical problems is vastly more satisfying than that. It's like maths to a mathematician, physics to a physicist. Why would they ever stop, given freedom to carry…
Can you acknowledge that solving technical problems for decades is just as horrifying to me? And that watching TV and doing nothing is extremely satisfying to me?
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#353Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does add something. If there is a direct question, and someone is answering it incorrectly it should be valid to tell them they misunderstood. Also calling someone a non programmer is not mean.
Nope. Not a charitable interpretation; not necessary by any means to 'correct' what is obviously an anecdotal comment in the same vein as the OP. Not even correct to call the commenter a non-programmer - assuming things not in evidence. A question like "But have you been continuously employed as a programmer?" could be reasonable and not mean-spirited.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#355Congrats! Just curious, as someone with so much experience, do you still have to do coding challenges when interviewing for positions?
Most of the "interviews" are conducted by very-recent college graduates who know the algorithms and their big-O.
The fact that I taught Data Structures didn't seem to matter as none of them actually read my resume (despite having a copy they brought with them).
It is more of a "hazing ritual" than a job interview.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, more optimistically, if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. I love programming too and have no plans on stopping either. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Programming is the thing you love the most and if it was 100% up to you what to do with your time you’d still do it? I mean I don’t hate my job but damn I’d just sit in front of the TV and go for walks if that was an option.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#357How did you avoid going into "management" ?? Have you ever been "promoted" to project manager?
Why would I go from the top of my skill set (programming) to the bottom of a job I'm unable to perform?
I can barely manage myself some days. And I am not a "people person".
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I love programming, among other things that people might regard as similar to programming. The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Solving technical problems is vastly more satisfying than that. It's like maths to a mathematician, physics to a physicist. Why would they ever stop, given freedom to carry…
> The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying. Can you acknowledge that solving technical problems for decades is just as horrifying to me? And that watching TV and doing nothing is extremely satisfying to me?
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#359I had a pleasure working with Andrey Michailovich Smirnov when I was around 36 in 2007. He was 75 at the time and was definitely run circles around me. For example, he was able to produce working compiler for subset of Fortran with compilation into dynamic dataflow machine in two-three weeks. I don't think he was retired.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Javascript is a lot saner than that. The result is "12". (I'm ok with automatic casting so long as it's an embedding. Every number has a reasonable string representation, but not vice versa. Wanting explicit casts like in Python is defensible, though.)
Huh, what do you know. Still, this is unforgivable in my book: [] + {} == "[object Object]" {} + [] == 0
Array.prototype.toString = function () {
return '[' + this.join(', ') + ']';
};
It would be convenient if Object.prototype.toString by default threw an exception, since the default breaks the embedding rule I described.The second example is misleading, and it has nothing to do with the rules for addition: the {} at the beginning of the expression is parsed as a code block, played off the rules for what the value of a Javascript statement is. More realistically, we have
({}) + [] == "[object Object]"
but the original is, effectively, {
}
console.log(+[]);