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82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

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Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#61

Post by hermitdev »

dahart wrote: post #23
always_good wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder the same thing trying to learn a new language. I notice the biggest difference between me and a child is that children don't care about messing up. Meanwhile I often have this worthless apprehension of "better not practice Spanish on these Spanish speakers, I might mess up and feel stupid." I tried to learn Spanish like I learned how to program. Now I'm living proof that you can become good enough to read bo…

I suspect adults learn languages a lot faster than kids, when we spend the same amount of time being exposed & practicing. All the polyglots say you have to be willing to mess up a lot and work to shed your fear of feeling stupid. In fact, try to seek it out because that's the primary way you get feedback & learn.

I'd suspect it's easier for children to learn unfamiliar spoken languages than adults (they don't have to un-learn certain patterns from a native language).

I'd postulate it's probably easier for trained adults to learn new programming languages as they're more familiar with structured syntax and the semantics involved, and are more likely to have exposure/experience with a similar language. Also, concepts from one programming language carry over to another, even if they're expressed differently.

I don't have any studies to back this up; it's just my gut-feel.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#62

Post by Odenwaelder »

ddebernardy wrote: post #56
tw1010 wrote: post #27

I always found it funny, the idea that age or agism should in any way stop you from achieving cool shit in business. Entrepreneurship is a jungle. Your customers, largely speaking, doesn't know your age or gender or whether or not you went to an ivy league school or anything else. Some career directions certainly do depend on that stuff, but that's mostly because they depend on other people for advancement. But build…

My hat goes to the old lady, but frankly, if you feel the need to code and market something at age 82 then the odds are you're either struggling to make ends meet, which might warrant giving a cold hard look at the pension system in place, or you don't have and never have had much of a life outside of work - no kids or grand-(grand-)children, no hobbies, etc.

Or, she was just bored. Projecting the capitalist point of view on old japanese people is very naive.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#63

Post by jrs95 »

optimuspaul wrote: post #58
ddebernardy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hat goes to the old lady, but frankly, if you feel the need to code and market something at age 82 then the odds are you're either struggling to make ends meet, which might warrant giving a cold hard look at the pension system in place, or you don't have and never have had much of a life outside of work - no kids or grand-(grand-)children, no hobbies, etc.

ouch, that's kind of harsh. You make a lot of assumptions.

The idea that someone would do work because they enjoy it seems entirely foreign to the parent. Although I suppose that is a more western perspective as well. Sure we have that whole "do what you love" bit, but there seems to be an appreciation of "craftsmanship" for lack of a better term that the Japanese have and we seem to have largely forgotten.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#64

Post by jdietrich »

ddebernardy wrote: post #56
tw1010 wrote: post #27

I always found it funny, the idea that age or agism should in any way stop you from achieving cool shit in business. Entrepreneurship is a jungle. Your customers, largely speaking, doesn't know your age or gender or whether or not you went to an ivy league school or anything else. Some career directions certainly do depend on that stuff, but that's mostly because they depend on other people for advancement. But build…

My hat goes to the old lady, but frankly, if you feel the need to code and market something at age 82 then the odds are you're either struggling to make ends meet, which might warrant giving a cold hard look at the pension system in place, or you don't have and never have had much of a life outside of work - no kids or grand-(grand-)children, no hobbies, etc.

The tech industry is full of people who don't need to work. Elon Musk could have comfortably retired in 1999 after Compaq bought Zip2. Would the world be a better place if he had done so?

It's an unfortunate reality that many older Japanese people have no choice but to keep working; with that said, I applaud anyone who chooses to use their retirement to learn new skills, explore new opportunities and keep making a contribution to society.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#65

Post by dahart »

octorian wrote: post #57
jdietrich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that openness and confidence are major factors. Having taught older adults to use computers, one of the major difficulties is getting them past the fear that they might "break" the computer and the need to memorise rote instructions rather than experiment with the interface. The body language is quite distinctive - tentatively pressing keys with an outstretched index finger as if the keyboard might jump up an…

I've seen these exact behaviors countless times, ever since I was the "kid who knows computers" (in the 90's) trying to walk adults through using them. Oh, and when you ask them to "look at the screen", they're only mentally able to process a 2-square-inch "window area" at any given moment. So you first have to direct their gaze, very specifically, before you can actually expect them to read and process anything. (Of…

As much as I'd agree with the symptoms you guys are describing when it comes to my parents and grandparents, I don't think this is much of an age problem at all.

The same thing happens to my kids when I present them with a bash shell. They don't understand how to read the instructions, and they're uncomfortable with text commands. They don't want to type 'man' or 'help', and they give up very quickly. Everything they use on computers and game consoles are GUIs, most of them extremely easy to use by the standards of text interfaces like bash & vi.

This is a familiarity problem. You have years and years of experience with your OSes, which is what allows you to see outside the 2-inch window when you use a new application. You know exactly what you can ignore, and exactly what you need to pay attention to. They don't. Being unfamiliar with all of it and not having any idea how any of it works is what makes it seem like they're not learning quickly, but it's more because they're trying to learn everything at once, and are overwhelmed, not because they're not learning at all.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#66

Post by thereare5lights »

ddebernardy wrote: post #56
tw1010 wrote: post #27

I always found it funny, the idea that age or agism should in any way stop you from achieving cool shit in business. Entrepreneurship is a jungle. Your customers, largely speaking, doesn't know your age or gender or whether or not you went to an ivy league school or anything else. Some career directions certainly do depend on that stuff, but that's mostly because they depend on other people for advancement. But build…

My hat goes to the old lady, but frankly, if you feel the need to code and market something at age 82 then the odds are you're either struggling to make ends meet, which might warrant giving a cold hard look at the pension system in place, or you don't have and never have had much of a life outside of work - no kids or grand-(grand-)children, no hobbies, etc.

These are terrible assumptions coming from a very limited view of the possible circumstances.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#67

Post by gordon_freeman »

tw1010 wrote: post #27

I always found it funny, the idea that age or agism should in any way stop you from achieving cool shit in business. Entrepreneurship is a jungle. Your customers, largely speaking, doesn't know your age or gender or whether or not you went to an ivy league school or anything else. Some career directions certainly do depend on that stuff, but that's mostly because they depend on other people for advancement. But build…

this is so true. Listening to the story of how Bob Moore founded Bob's Red Mills in his 50s in How I Built This podcast today. And it seems the concept of age is just in our minds.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#68

Post by noir_lord »

ben_jones wrote: post #31
noir_lord wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are a lot less painful than they used to be. fetch()/promises/async/await and better browser support. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FormData https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API Also promises (coupled with async/await) make things a great deal more pleasant and I'm old enough to remember the old days.

How does javascript async/await solve form handling (presumably pure html) and basic PHP?

He said ajax, the asynchronous part can be handled cleanly with async/await particularly if doing more complex field validation/rules.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#69

Post by vanderZwan »

padthai wrote: post #6

What does it mean "oriented to old people"? Old people can play anything, they just have slower reflexes. Silver Snipers are 60-80 years old and play Counter Strike: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800924/silver-snipers-...

Arguably there might be culturally/socially more appealing topics and associated gameplay for different generations.
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