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Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

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Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#501

Post by thorin »

jb1991 wrote: post #17

I don't know you personally but I doubt cognitive decline has anything to do with this. As we age, we usually end up with more and more life responsibilities, beyond just the work we are doing. All of that is input to the brain and requires energy in response. The brain is not infinite. I often feel as you do, but then I have periods where I am as light and agile in my productivity as 20 years ago, maybe even more so…

I think this is quite true, and I've noticed that my son can remember virtually every pokemon card and football player he's interested in whereas I've started to have to write things down. His world is quite small and now with the Internet etc our focus is very wide. It takes serious discipline to focus on something low level exclusively and not be subject to outside interference.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#503

Post by iamflimflam1 »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #4

This sounds like terribly boring developer work to do and requires no creativity at all. Is that what's missing when comparing to other types of developer work that might keep you more engaged and focused? I'm not suggesting to push back about why it needs porting, I assume that bridge has been crossed already. The other thought is that maybe it was poorly written, having multiple layers of abstraction, etc. that are…

I would second this - as I've got older, my capacity to do boring things has decreased.

Younger me didn't find coding boring - I was still learning things.

Older me, has done a lot of things multiple times. I'm often not learning anything (or, I don't believe I'm going to learn anything).

To be honest, things like Copilot have really helped with this - auto generating boiler plate code removes a lot of the tedium.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#505

Post by majgr »

Open excel spreadsheet, paste function, when in this function another is being called, paste it and draw an arrow to it. Now, you have both of them visible. You can navigate stack going along arrows. Add comments, or colors. Spreadsheet is almost infinite 2D canvas. It is not my idea, I stole it 14 years ago from my work peer.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#508

Post by wazoox »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #443
vogt wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing the routine, or a general outline of how you approached weight lifting from “zero” to “one”? I’m approaching 36 and haven’t lifted anything in 10+ years. But reading sentiments like this is motivating me to start again. I’m just scared honestly - my body has atrophied quite a bit the last 4-5 years at minimum

I'm not who you asked, but I'll share my experience escaping sedentarism in advice form: Start with push-ups. They're fast and require nothing but a flat surface. You can always transition to lifting weights later. Start today, ideally right now . Seriously. It's your only chance. Tomorrow there'll be an even better reason not to. Don't worry about initial quantity. You can start with two push-ups, that's fine. It'll…

This. For me the secret to actually going from total couch-potato to fit was to exercise every. single. day but Sundays.

I tried 3 times a week or whatever, and every day you'll find some excuse to push exercising to the morrow.

But doing exactly the same routine every day was key. Then the routine evolves with time, but it's almost always the same routine. I started with a few pushups, then added burpees, then I bought some weights and added a few movements, then I started running 300m a day the first week, and augmented gradually until I ran 42 km every single week.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#509

Post by mgkimsal »

mmcnl wrote: post #463
clnq wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that web development is complex. I disagree that abstraction layers add complexity. Abstraction layers solve problems. True, until there's a bug in abstraction level 6 caused by an upstream change in proprietary abstraction level 3 that's been patched in abstraction level 8, but not for your specific case. Then it becomes complex.

Yes, but in my experience this doesn't actually happen that often as long as you don't rely on external dependencies too much. This happens in any ecosystem btw.

> as long as you don't rely on external dependencies too much. This happens in any ecosystem btw.

I can't think of many 'modern' projects in the web world that do not rely heavily on an often very large number of external dependencies.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#510

Post by jvandyke »

Buttons840 wrote: post #90
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #64

I'm a little bit older than you and have been in the industry for almost 30 years. I have a different perspective than mental decline. I think it's that after seeing code and patterns for so long, you might be defaulting to generalization of ideas. I know that I do that. For example, one of the best developers on my team (a little bit older than me) is "on the spectrum". We've worked together for nearly 20 years, sta…

Interesting perspective, thank you. Code is the author's though processes made concrete (in a sense), and some people just think differently, some people are just incompatible. Over the years I've seen some codebases considered good that are easy to follow and I like them, and other codebases considered good that just seem to grind my mental gears even though I can't put my finger on any specific problems with the co…

I'm also turning 40 this year! You may want to look up crystallized intelligence (wisdom) vs. fluid intelligence ("raw" power) (https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-emotional-intelligence-...) and let those concepts process for a bit. We tend to move towards crystallized intelligence as we age, which has many advantages that folks are alluding to here. The key could be to recognize the difference and where your current strengths lie without wishing for the past (probably fictionalized) you. You are who you are now, not what you were. Be mindful and appreciate the experience and strengths you have now that you didn't as a younger person. You might try to organize your work, and maybe eventually change your job/position/title, so that your current strengths are aligned with the expectations. In other words, you don't have to keep trying to be a great programmer, but you might become a great mentor, manager, author, oyster diver, etc. It's the reason many move from engineer to manager or musician to producer. You can actually be much more effective and valuable if your experience can help inform many people's code rather than just your own. You may also want to think about how great it could be not to even try being the "best" programmer. What a relief! Now you can focus on what you care about in your field and perhaps turn your focus outward towards helping other people instead of simply building your own resume.

Good luck and get the sleep you need.

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