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Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

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Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#61

Post by vilhelm_s »

rayiner wrote: post #34
cl8ton wrote: post #6

I am one of the older'ish programmers One day a young programmer flies into the office talking about the new MVC frameworks and how it would revolutionize how we write programs. He was mystified when I explained how MVC works to him without even looking at what framework he was ranting about. He asked how I knew? I told him it was invented at PARC in the 70's and I've used them starting in 1995 with the MFC C++ for d…

There is very little new under the sun, at least if you're talking about what's going on in the mainstream rather than what's happening in the theoretical space (with GADTs, dependent types, etc). It's been a very long time since I saw software development technology that wasn't just the application of something developed in the 1960's through 1980's. "Oh, Java has lambdas now? Here are the design patterns that take…

And GATDs and dependent types are pretty old too by now. E.g. Martin-Löf Type Theory was first published 1971-1972. :)

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#62

Post by codex »

There appears to be no attempt to correct for survivorship bias in this study, making it at best highly suspect and at worst, worthless.

For all we know, people who are good at getting karma on Stack Overflow stay on the site simply because they're good at getting karma on Stack Overflow.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#63

Post by chris_mahan »

shalmanese wrote: post #28

I find the study to be highly suspect. Looking at Stack Overflow means that you're only looking at people who are looking to learn & grow. It could be perfectly possible that programmers "weed out" of career advancement as they age and stay stuck with the same skills but those same programmers never think to create a SO profile.

I'm 45 this year, and I have a SO account. I contribute very little to it now because some of my questions and responses were closed and deleted.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#64

Post by danielweber »

jorgeleo wrote: post #26
cl8ton wrote: post #6

I am one of the older'ish programmers One day a young programmer flies into the office talking about the new MVC frameworks and how it would revolutionize how we write programs. He was mystified when I explained how MVC works to him without even looking at what framework he was ranting about. He asked how I knew? I told him it was invented at PARC in the 70's and I've used them starting in 1995 with the MFC C++ for d…

Yup, it has happen to me too. I have around 20 years in software development. Around 9 years ago... Me: We can abstract most of that data access with a simple table oriented orm. Not all of it, but a good 80%. Younger Developer: Nope, That is what record sets are for, it is right here in the Microsoft docs (pointing to the ado api) ... 5 years later, he had moved to a different company, and I received a phone call fr…

Your first younger developer sounds awesome. I've worked with people (some older, some younger) that refused to learn from their mistakes.

All developers make mistakes -- "I built this because I was worried about X but I should have been worried about Y." The problem is making the same mistakes over and over.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#66

Post by arethuza »

btilly wrote: post #42
arethuza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And MVC was talked about a lot as a design pattern for Web apps before Struts was started - I remember we rolled our own rather nifty one in 2001 or so and failed to get our execs to open source it so it died when the team withered away after our acquisition.

Struts was released in 2000, so it predates yours. However I know people who were using MVC as a design pattern in Perl in the 90s.

What I meant was that Struts wasn't the first mention of MVC in relation to web apps - lots of people were rolling their own frameworks in 2000/2001 and MVC was a common buzzword.

As most developers in those days hadn't started with web apps it wasn't surprising that the term MVC was used - e.g. we were writing MVC C++ wrappers for simulations in 93/94 and Java MVC simulations in applets from '95.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#67

Post by brudgers »

shalmanese wrote: post #28

I find the study to be highly suspect. Looking at Stack Overflow means that you're only looking at people who are looking to learn & grow. It could be perfectly possible that programmers "weed out" of career advancement as they age and stay stuck with the same skills but those same programmers never think to create a SO profile.

I have reservations about the study, but for different reasons. I suspect there is a correlation between age and the perceived value of participating in online discussions. I also suspect that there is a correlation between age and the perceived value of that person's contributions to an online discussion.

I suspect that in Stack Overflow discussions which discourage lols and memes, older programmers are more likely to find an intrinsic value from participation and are likely to be better able to communicate their responses clearly (just by having more experience writing).

Joel Spolsky created a site he (as an over forty programmer) deemed constructive. Those sharing his general experience are more likely to share his views about what is constructive.

The same might be approximately true for HN (PG is about a year older than Joel Spolsky). But the less ruthless editing of HN may play a role.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#68

Post by D9u »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #55
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were lots of MVC frameworks for web development that predated Rails. For example Struts.

LOL ... I am old! I learned MVC developing MFC apps back in the 90s!!

I resemble that remark... I'm also old.

I was writing RDBMS in dBase, compiled with Clipper, on MS-DOS, in the early 1990's, when I was about 30 years of age. (I was the "old guy" 20 years ago)

Wow! The decades just keep passing by with increasing relevant speed.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#69

Post by neilk »

PaulHoule wrote: post #19
api wrote: post #4

The prevalence of discrimination toward extreme youth in the software industry is probably a historical artifact of the fact that it's a new industry, so for the most part young people were the ones who "got it." That being said, I think it cuts both ways. Both younger and older developers have advantages. Older developers tend to see pitfalls and avoid them better. They tend to have a more diverse skill set, better…

The best teams work to actively transfer the experience from senior people to junior.

Or vice versa.

Re: Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

#70

Post by bubbleRefuge »

beat wrote: post #43

As a 40-something who is 20 years into his career, I don't think I'm a particularly better PROGRAMMER than I was about five years in. But there is SO much more to being a useful tech than programming! And I'm much more sophisticated about big-picture thinking, business, and planning these days. Back when I was barely past "junior", I got to work on some really cool software at a dotcom-era startup. Technically, it wa…

Knowing a domain acquired with experience and which isn't taught in school is a big differentiator. Maybe game programming/graphics is like this ?
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