

I'm terrified of older web developers. Because I'm becoming one. - superduper
http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/sandbox/im-terrified-older-web-developers/

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kanak
Last semester, I took a class with Prof Gerry Sussman (of SICP fame). It was
totally mindbending, and seeing his code samples (usually introduced by saying
"I was hacking on this last night...") left me with a sense of awe and
amazement. I can't even count the number of times I said "I didn't even know
that was possible!" upon seeing his code.

This is a man who has been coding since atleast the early 70s, and is still in
the top of his form. I would be happy to have even 10% of the skills he has. I
think its very sad that a lot of people in the younger generation treat older
developers as if they're out of touch and are dinosaurs from a bygone era.
Sure they may not know Ruby on Rails or JQuery, but quite a few of them have
mastered the timeless concepts and are a great source of wisdom and insight. I
would love to work with and be mentored by someone who has "done his time".

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kennu
I have a strong intent on remaining a coder/tech guy for the rest of my life.

Why? Because the only thing I've gotten a real kick out of, for the past 15
years, is learning new technologies and applying them to projects. I get bored
after a few years of working with the same tech.

Sure I've managed some projects and even some people, and still have to
occasionally, but it feels like being a fish out of water, not doing something
you were born to do.

I suppose there will be a day when you find yourself surrounded by younger
people with technical authority over you, because you just couldn't keep up
any longer. But maybe there won't, if you don't let it happen?

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blacksmythe
Web development tools have changed so much that it is hard for a web developer
with 20 years experience developing SW (most of which probably wasn't even in
web development) to be vastly better than someone with 5 years experience.
Contrast that to a C++ developer with 20 years experience to someone with 5
years experience developing C++.

It seems to me, however, that changes in web development are coming more
slowly, and it is reasonable to expect that in 10 years the author of this
post could be much more productive than someone with 5 years experience.

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devmonk
Time to switch careers I suppose, or become a manager. Hopefully not a bad
manager, but there are more bad or average managers than good/outstanding
ones.

