

The Value of a 70-Year-Old Software Engineer - cwan
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/31/the-value-of-a-70-year-old-software-engineer/

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dpritchett
The 70ish programmer I work with is fabulously valuable and he's not even
directly leveraging his hard-to-find COBOL skills (he works as a SQL DBA, we
have other COBOL programmers on staff).

His main value to me is that he can immediately and measurably improve any
design we bring to him.

When I'm designing a new system or process I always run it by him and he'll
give me a few thoughtful suggestions that make my design more robust,
auditable, and maintainable. This "unconscious competence" [1] borne of
decades in the trenches can't be taught.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence>

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inland
The article stated "Being technically obsolete gives him an advantage." AND
"...there are so few other programmers left who can deal with the old
technology!

So...what are good examples of "old technology" that might be interesting and
offer opportunity if mastered to fill a niche for the next decade?

The article mentioned COBOL. Any thoughts about FORTRAN or particular
technical hardware such as old CNC machine tools, etc.?

