
Why age in software is bullshit - moonlighter
https://medium.com/@davewiner/why-age-in-software-is-bullshit-2b28b2f4b101#.wbp7h3cts
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ckdarby
I think the author misses what is being said by the individuals making the
'age' comment.

I'm in my 20s and I've said this comment before plenty but it isn't in the
context of someone being too old to ship code but instead the fact that as we
age we usually take on additional commitments, responsibilities, etc.

All these extra factors often limit the amount of time that most people have
to dedicate to coding.

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BatFastard
So what you're saying is basically you have "no life", and you are willing to
dedicate your waking hours to your job (or playing Pokemon Go). Been there
done that, found out the hard way that it usually ends in a way that is not so
advantageous to you. I am still writing code at 58 because it's what I like to
do. I have founded, managed and CTO'ed. But when I code I feel better during
the day, I feel like I have accomplished more, and I sleep a lot better then
when I herded cats. Retirement is a slow death... I am going to be coding
until I die, at least 30 more years!

~~~
gonzo
mostly "ditto". 54.

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yanilkr
Its usually not the age. But its common for people effected to think that they
are being discriminated because of their age.

There is a tendency for a lot of people to hang on to tools and ideas that
worked for them in the past. e.g someone who comes from a relational world,
finds it very hard to get used to nosql unless their boss gives them no
choice.

~~~
im_down_w_otp
The irony I find in this depiction is the "hot new" stuff in today's ecosystem
is very often stuff that's already existed for 2-3 decades in some less trendy
form, given a new brand identity (complete with cookie-cutter .io website),
and grows a Twitter & conference clique around it as though it's being
discovered for the first time.

"Reactive", "Streams", "Containers", "NoSQL", "Big Data", "Blockchain", the
list goes on. I work, or have recently worked, in each of those problem
domains to a non-trivial extent, so I'm absolutely no stranger to the leading
edge of the marketplace, but I still find it amusing how gaga people get over
the new branding, and I'm even more amused how indignant people get when you
show them work from 15-20 years ago that was materially similar under the "hot
new" brand name it had back then.

Sure the show might be new to a lot of people, but to a lot of other people
it's just re-runs that have been in syndication for a long time with tired
plot devices and predictable story arcs.

Reluctance to jump on the bandwagon may very well be rooted in the scar tissue
built up the last time around, not purely reticence to try something new. They
may just be withholding their enthusiasm until they try can something
_actually new_.

~~~
naveen99
What is your analogue to bitcoin from a decade ago ? Merkel trees are old
(1979), Hashcash goes back to 1997
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash)
But bitcoin is not just a rebranding of a combination of hashcash, merk trees,
forth, pgp, BitTorrent.

Also what is the analogue to reactive in the past ? The main reason for
reactive is different screen sizes and orientation of handheld devices. What
similar problem would reactive have solved 2 decades ago ? There are a couple
of references from 2001 and 2004
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design)
, but really there wasn't a practical common use case before the iPhone in
2007 and ipad in 2010.

~~~
im_down_w_otp
"Blockchain", not bitcoin, and "Blockchain" is quite literally a specific
application of Merkle Trees and Merkle Proofs, and they've been used almost
exactly like this in payments clearing & settlement + dispute systems for
tranlog coherency checks and resolution for a long time.

"Reactive", as in
[http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/](http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/), and
it's manifestations in various Akka projects like [http://www.reactive-
streams.org/](http://www.reactive-streams.org/). Reading the "manifesto" reads
like somebody going to really, really extensive lengths to talk about Erlang
without actually saying "Erlang" and that's been around publicly, along with
its runtime semantics, since 1998.

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jotaefea
I'd say the problem (which may be correlated with age) starts when we repeat
"I know" too much and "I'm learning" too little.

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notacoward
I don't think it's surprising that older people have the _ability_ to be so
prolific. What's surprising is that they still have the _patience_ to put up
with all of the BS that goes along with writing software. When you hit the ten
thousandth broken library API or build-system idiosyncracy of your career,
it's tempting to scream "Enough!" and retire to farm fish or something. Ditto
for dealing with well-meaning users demanding features to support an
impossible use case, or not-so-well-meaning haters trashing you on
Twitter/HN/Reddit. If you can _only code_ , on what you want the way you want,
without caring even one little bit if anybody uses or likes it, that might
still be fun. Otherwise, all that other stuff gets pretty old, and that's more
of a problem than _you_ getting old. As you see your friends starting to pull
back or retire altogether, and you realize that you _could_ do the same, the
idea gets pretty tempting even if you love to code.

BTW, since somebody's likely to ask, I'm 51.

