
Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding - clubminsk
https://belitsoft.com/php-development-services/top-software-developers-after-40-50-and-60#2
======
numinary1
What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" Would anyone think it odd for
a 60-year-old physician to still be doctoring, or a 60-year-old lawyer to
still practice law. Or for that matter for a 60-year-old artist or
craftsperson to "still" pursue their craft.

Corporate culture embraces the notion of management as a profession. I think
programming would benefit greatly from more of a tradecraft model, where
leadership is provided by the master practitioner rather than the professional
manager. In the alternate universe that's how we do it. The bottom line
productivity boost is awesome. I don't know if it scales, but I don't care to
scale.

\-- 63-year-old full-stack web and machine learning programmer...living the
dream

~~~
cryptonector
There is a reason graybeards are valuable. It's not that they're over 50 or
60. It's experience. A full-stack developer with 20 years' worth of experience
will not make certain kinds of mistakes.

~~~
justin66
Does anyone with 20 years experience refer to themselves as a "full-stack
developer?"

~~~
cyberferret
By default, most programmers from two decades ago ARE full stack developers.

Back then, there was no separation of front end, back end or database - it was
all melded into one, so if I wanted to write an app, I would have to learn the
language, figure out how to display the data and collect user input from the
screen, write the data tables and the code to update it etc. etc.

There was no question of learning SQL or raw file system I/O to manipulate
data - there was no ORM or framework to fall back on. Until Windows came
along, there was no standard on UI or UX principles. It was all 'build it as
you go'.

Some of those older habits die hard. Though I use ORMs almost all the time
now, I still find myself experimenting with queries in raw SQL before
translating them to my ORM of choice. I still have a hard time separating my
front end code, or the design elements thereof, for someone else to do,
because I am so used to doing it myself.

Somehow, I still feel the need for ownership of all aspects of my application
stack, and will often spend an inordinate amount of time learning about
something that I am not familiar with. As I said before, Old habits die hard.

So, while I don't often refer to myself as a 'full stack developer', I do
routinely say that I 'do it all, including making the coffee and sweeping the
floor in the server room'.

~~~
defined
Yes! Thank you. I never know what to call myself. I just signed a comment as
"broad-spectrum software developer", but your description is more accurate.

We catch the things that fall between the cracks; we are the glue that binds
together the things that fall apart; we are the toolmakers, the automaters,
the pinch-hitter sysadmins; we are problem solvers, the ones that do whatever
it takes - and if we don't know how, we learn.

------
Mc_Big_G
45\. Still coding, probably until I die. Light years ahead of younger
developers in the following:

* Writing less code

* Writing maintainable code

* Re-using existing code (requires reading existing code)

* Know how APIs should be written

* Knowing how to properly map associations

* Know when or when not to use another library

* Knowing when to tell a product manager to go back and do some more product managing

* Knowing when to say "No"

* Knowing how to determine what a stake holder actually needs vs. what they think they want

* Understanding that 8 hours today and 8 hours tomorrow is 10x better than 16 hours today.

* Saying "I don't know" when asked "How long will it take" or "When will it be done"

* Fighting against shitty processes

* Fighting FOR processes

* Forcing PMs to use software designed for the purpose of creating software instead of accepting requirements through email/slack/invision/zeplin/google docs/tool of someone else's choice

~~~
mod
> Saying "I don't know" when asked "How long will it take" or "When will it be
> done"

~5 years experience speaking: How do you do this?

I have a very good boss and he knows things, objectively, like "estimates are
very squishy," and "developers suck at estimating time" etc. But he still
demands time estimates to give clients.

Our clients are often agencies, and they get it as well.

I do estimates like "10-40 hours, depending on XYZ (things I don't know)"
sometimes and it doesn't really raise any eyebrows. That may as well say "I
don't know."

Are you better than this? Do you just outright refuse or do you have some way
you handle it?

~~~
humanrebar
> How do you do this?

Give half-order-of-magnitude estimates as confidence intervals. Avoid using
"hours" or "days" as estimates. Story points work really well here.

Be extra clear on priorities and burndowns to make it clear that you're not
just blowing them off. Give short but frequent demos (not just reports) of
progress. If later they're concerned about progress, you can point back to all
the times you reviewed the product, touched base about priorities, and agreed
on next steps.

Make risk _really_ clear to them. If the project is 'get it done in three
months or bust', then the payoff (ten times the principal?) better be high
enough to account for the risk (30%? 50%? 70%) that you won't make it on time
and on budget. That is, you don't want to wait until failure to discover a bad
business plan.

At the end of the day, you need to be willing to be patient with and/or walk
away from 'business people' that can't wrap their heads around the fact that
20% profit on a venture with a 50% failure rate is a bad business plan. Making
employees stressed or overworked to compensate is not a humane solution to the
problem. To that end, don't work crazy hours to meet a deadline. That is bad
for you, bad for your team, and bad for management since it enables
dysfunctional planning.

~~~
ams6110
> Give half-order-of-magnitude estimates

My current boss likes to ask "is it a day, a week, a month, or a year" and
while sometimes I just want to say "yes, it's one of those" I actually think
that's a pretty reasonable way to ask the question.

~~~
rhizome
I heard a saying once, "Deadlines slip by the units they're measured in." If
you say three weeks, it will slip by weeks, not days or months. If the
estimate is months, etc.

------
SimonPStevens
"StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of
developers after 40. Where are the others?"

Not wasting time filling out online surveys?

I'm not even 40 yet and I realised online surveys were a waste of time years
ago. :-)

A stackoverflow survey doesn't measure the answers of stackoverflow users. It
measures the answers from the specific demographic of stackoverflow users who
are inclined to answer surveys. Those demographics overlap but are not equal.

~~~
Joeri
There is still some truth to it. I'm 37 and have had to repeatedly and
forcefully turn down managerial roles. The idea of horizontal growth is a hard
sell to people who've chosen the vertical path. It would be very easy to drift
into a management role, and in fact it happened to me once and I had to take
deliberate action to get off the management track.

I don't want to manage people. I want to build, and learn about building. And
I hope to be lucky enough to do that until retirement age.

~~~
criddell
I'm 10 years older than you but feel the same way.

I would be interested in hearing from people that did make the jump to
management. Why did you do it? How did it turn out? Any regrets about making
the jump or for not making the jump sooner?

~~~
wvenable
I manage a small team of developers and still do a lot of development myself.
My reason for doing it is that because what I want to work on now is bigger
than a single person. I have a vision of what I want to accomplish and I can't
do it all myself.

So far it's turned out well and I have no regrets. For me it wasn't a jump at
all, just a gradual progression of what I've already been doing.

~~~
andrewmcwatters
Thank you for posting this point of view. I have a feeling there's plenty of
people on HN like this, but I don't see others explicitly talk about it often.

------
Tistel
I'm 42, programming is the fun part of the job (meetings, nonsensical time
estimates and travel tend to be worst part of the job). Had a computer my
whole life (Vic-20, oh yeah!) I strongly agree with what others have said in
the article: Keep learning new things. I did nothing but C++ for 13 years
(console games) and felt like a dinosaur. Despite the fact that there are
still (a few) C++ jobs out there, I made a point to avoid them. Did a python
based app for a year (IPython is fantastic!). Did a GO app for a year (which
was kind of interesting, only luke warm on the language for some reason). At
the moment I am learning Elixir and Phoenix and still get the excited feeling
when the program works. It is strange that such a well paid / interesting
field has so few older people in it. One concern I have is that my hair is
starting to turn grey so I think the HR process will get a bit trickier
(planning on moving to more remote work so they can't see the grey :)).

~~~
taway_1212
> One concern I have is that my hair is starting to turn grey so I think the
> HR process will get a bit trickier (planning on moving to more remote work
> so they can't see the grey :)

I'm thinking of dyeing hair before interviews when I face the same problem.

~~~
duderific
I don't think you want to work in a place where they care about such things.

~~~
tyingq
Not all bias is conscious, or intentional. The hair dye may not be a bad idea,
just temporarily, during the search. Get a pro though, obvious shoe polish
color is, er, obvious.

~~~
duderific
As a 48 year old developer with a lot of gray hair...I've never seen anyone
with dyed hair where it wasn't pretty obvious. To me it makes you seem a bit
desperate.

~~~
tyingq
That's the thing though, if it was done well, you didn't see it. Ask a few
women, that already trust you, if they dye their gray... especially the ones
you think don't.

------
lutusp
I'm 71, I wrote a best-seller in the early 1980s (Apple Writer for the Apple
][), I still code regularly but not for income, so my circumstances might not
be what the article focuses on. I write a lot of Python, JavaScript, some
Java, I have a number of Android apps listed at the Google Play store -- all
of them free, no ads
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Paul+Lutus&h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Paul+Lutus&hl=en)).

Why do I still program? Because I like programming. I never experienced
serious burnout, probably because I didn't have to program for anyone else --
I was always my own boss.

Apropos the article's topic, I often visit StackOverflow but I never post
anything there, I only read the inquiries of others, which invariably provide
the information I need. This practice might make people like me essentially
invisible.

~~~
aventuri
Paul Lutus, you a mith of my Apple ][ times. cant believe (and SO happy..) you
online!! IIRC you were programming in a bungalow out of nowhere at that time..
right?

me, 50 yo, still coding embedded sw..

~~~
lutusp
> IIRC you were programming in a bungalow out of nowhere at that time.. right?

Yep, that be me:

[http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...](http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php)

~~~
aventuri
really, you made my day^W week!! honored to be chatting with you, really.

BTW it's amazing this "virtual gathering" happening online in 2017. who could
have been thinking, 30 years ago, this to be possible this way, so smoothly..
can't imagine where we are headed in the next 30..

------
peapicker
".. However, StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13%
of developers after 40. Where are the others?"

Obviously not on StackOverflow. Perhaps they have enough experience and
knowledge to not need the site because they either know how to read tech books
and sites to get the info they need when they have a problem using pre-
existing docs, or conversely, are fully able to debug issues themselves.

That's what I do, anyway. (I'm 46)

~~~
ronilan
I don't understand how someone can _" have enough experience and knowledge to
not need the site"_.

I use StackOverflow practically all the time. I always think to myself, _"
yep, this (Wikipedia, YouTube and... yah HN) is what the internet is for"_.

But maybe I'm just too young. (I'm 47 ;) )

~~~
coldtea
> _I don 't understand how someone can "have enough experience and knowledge
> to not need the site"._

If you've been programming for a couple of decades and you don't follow the
trends du jour it's actually quite easy (note: I'm not at that level myself).

Seasoned C and C++ programmers, for example, don't have much to learn from
Stack Overflow in the same way a (1) new programmer, (2) 0-20 years programmer
who constantly juggles languages, APIs and frameworks etc depending on the job
and the fads of the season.

You think someone like Linus checks SO to get his answers?

There are tons of programmers with such levels of experience (even if somewhat
less so than Linus).

Let's put it another way: before 2008 NO programmer checked "Stack Overflow"
all the time. Before 2000 they didn't even have Google, and before 1995 or so
they didn't have much (if anything) in the way of online documentation and
similar resources.

That's not ancient history: a 20 year-ish programmer has managed for 10+ years
of their career without Stack Overflow.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Windows programmers had the MSDN, or whatever it was called.

MS provided lots of example code and docs.

~~~
JdeBP
As many companies did. It came on discs. In the post.

------
drawkbox
Software development/engineering is still a young industry, most developer
jobs really came about with the internet in the mid-90s on up and increasing
every year. So the numbers will skew younger at least for a few decades.

The bulk of people that have been coding since jr/high school and college are
around or in their 40s now. C++ was invented in mid 80s for instance and not
really fully in taking over desktop apps for a few years, combined with the
internet then browsers, from that everything today + mobile which is another
growth area. People were pushed into management because there were minimal
veterans in the early 90s/00s, and you could be a senior coder within a few
years.

The ages will eventually skew up especially with GenY/Millenials being greater
in numbers than Gen X who were really the first generation to fully have
internet jr/high school/college on, and many went into development, older than
that some switched but most had their path in life already going. Ages will
skew older with the next couple generations as they age. When radio started
everyone was young in it as well for many of the same reasons.

------
GnarfGnarf
68, coding since 1965. There is no better job. I hope to be coding the week I
leave.

(Note: there are more useful jobs: doctor, nurse, farmer).

~~~
charles-salvia
Doctors rely on software a lot to do their job. One day they may even be
replaced by software.

~~~
kaftoy
I hope that day never comes.

~~~
geldan
I hope it does. If doctors are replaced it's because medical care has improved
beyond their capabilities. How could you not want better medical care?

~~~
cyberferret
If I had to have someone operate and suture a ruptured artery inside me after
a terrible accident or something - I would rather a human doctor be able to do
it. Also, a human being would be better at doing that in a non clinical
environment (such as road side assistance at a vehicle accident scene etc.).

Also, as the son of a respected doctor, I see other aspect of 'doctoring' that
extend to far beyond technical or diagnostic skills. Hardly a day went by when
we were out in public when a former patient of his would approach us and thank
him for safely delivering their child or saving their lives. I don't think
that an email thanking AutoDocBot3000 v2.33 for diagnosis & drug dispensation
# 288374 would have the same impact.

------
humanrebar
I like the thread here, but I'd like to point out that we shouldn't limit our
check on ageism to the people who are "still coding".

If we want people in dead-end jobs and failing industries to have a chance to
move forward in new ways, we need to willing to accept _qualified_ "junior"
engineers of all ages and backgrounds.

I have seen this sort of ageism in the interview process and it's tricky to
constructively correct people in having different standards for 22 year-olds
than they have for 32, 42, or 52 year-olds.

------
gjmacd
I'm 52, started writing code professionally in 1985. Started my career on 68K
assembler. In the 90's I was a Windows SDK developer (then COM/ATL, etc.), In
1999 started a company but chose Linux and embraced FOSS and built a company
on a Lamp stack (sold it in 2014).

The only thing that can hurt you in this industry is that you stop learning
and stop growing. I tell my employees to always learn something new every
month. Pick something cool, learn it. This industry changes too fast to stick
in one area of technology. Two years ago, nobody was talking about Node.js as
being "important", now you can't see a company or startup not looking for
Node/MEAN stack developers -- that's how quick this industry moves.

But hey. I am old... I use Emacs (still), but have moved to Visual Code on my
Mac (with Emacs bindings of course...). I do most of my work in the ZSH, but
use Bullet Train and Powerline Shell... So I embrace "new" and am open to
things that make it easier and better.

Personally? How do I keep pace being the old man? I take 3-6 months off and
learn a new technology. What I mean about "learn" is that I actually build an
app that's useful or used by customers (people). I don't just play with
something, I learn it to become productive and then move to the next thing...

Right now, I've just got to the point of feeling "productive" in Elixir. Which
I think is going to be the "game changer" on the full stack side and love
functional programming (after being an OO guy for what, 25 years!?)... Elixir
is my new love and haven't been this excited about a stack in a long time.

Learn, learn, learn... write code, keep your brain active. Age means nothing
in this field other than when you show up for an interview and the rest of the
employees are wearing Skinny Jeans and you've got Dockers on.

I like to call it "Dad coding".

~~~
gaza3g
Can you tell us a bit more about 'taking 3-6 months off' to learn new things.
I'm thinking about doing that myself.

Did you take a sabbatical? Is your current company ok with this? What did you
work on?

~~~
gjmacd
When I say "take 3-6 months off", I mean from distractions of life around you.
Most people working, it's not reasonable to take that much time off. What I
mean is, focus for 3-6 months on something new, spend 3-4 hours a day -- even
if you have to box out some time at night to learning something. Often times
over my life, I've told my wife, "OK, I'm going into hunker down mode..."
which she new that I wasn't going to be counting on me for "free time" all
that much for the next several months because I'll be in a mode of heads-down
and learning. Like going to the gym or class, you need to carve out time and
make time (weekends, nights, etc.). Make the time mandatory in your day. If
you DO have the luxury of taking 30 days off (I know people who do have that),
use that time for possibly going to an on-site bootcamp. Another thing I've
done is take that 3-6 months and attend a class or bootcamp. With Bootcamp's
becoming so much the rage these days, you can go 2 or 3 nights a week and
learn a technology in 3 months. It's awesome.

------
fizixer
Wait what?

39 and I consider myself just getting started.

~~~
lolive
I second that. Things began to get much funnier when I started learning
additional languages beyond the first one (:Java, that I still like very
much).

------
cyberferret
I'm 50 and still writing new code and launching new apps. In fact, I've
probably release more apps in the last 5 years that I did in my previous 25+
years of programming (started when I was about 18).

While I concur that I am not as energetic as I used to be in my 20's and 30's
- i.e. I cannot do non stop 12 hour code marathons etc., I think my code these
days is a lot more disciplined and well thought out, and better organised.

I will happily spend time to look at the latest and greatest bleeding edge
technology or framework, but when it comes time to write 'money code', I
usually fall back on tech that has been around for 5+ years.

My passion for coding has not diminished - I am still excited every time I sit
down at the keyboard. As long as I feel that, I will keep coding or working
around software.

------
discreteevent
Dave Cutler - 75.

Lead developer on VMS, NT and Azure. Working on the core of XBox up to couple
of years ago (still is?).

I won't say what age I am when the article seems to think that 45 is
relatively old, but Dave Cutler shows that there's no excuses. If you're good,
you're good, young or old.

~~~
frik
What will Microsoft do without him? All of Cutlers former team members that
worked on WinNT series kernel retired long ago. Less and less devs understand
the internals and the Win32 userland. You see new bolted on frameworks, and
new apps instead of extending older one. Newer devs want to create new things
instead of msintaining decade old code. No one wants to pay QA... the user is
now the alpha/beta tester.

------
symmitchry
The idea that 40 is "old" is hilarious to me.

~~~
sotojuan
This is the same industry that calls people in their late 20s "senior".

~~~
sokoloff
_Late_ 20s? I've seen title structures where the first promotion is to
"senior" and that is often granted ~18 months into working. It's early enough
that it can be ambiguous as to whether it means your working title or your
year in college.

~~~
mattmanser
I saw someone get promoted to a "senior" for rolling his own logging
framework. And then starts arguing with me about how long functionality will
take when he clearly hasn't got a scooby of what's involved (me 2 months, him
2 days, 2 weeks later and he's still trying to pick apart how the code even
works).

One of many reasons I bailed from that gig asap.

~~~
krapp
At a previous gig, I had to explain to my CTO what JSON was and why it was
better than the ad-hoc serialization format he made up where every field was
delimited by multiple dollar signs. I _interned_ there, and I was probably
twice as old as everyone else.

Oh, and that JSON was supported natively in PHP. The language they were using.

------
dtietjen
I expect one contributing factor to this statistic is the proliferation of
software development over the past decade. As millennials get older, so too
will this generation of coders and hackers. The mid-twenties image "software
engineer" conjures, will keep getting older. I'm fascinated to see how this
will make software engineering a less sexy job / will change tech culture
among deveopers

------
WalterBright
I'll be programming until my head doesn't work anymore.

------
sriram_sun
Keep in mind that the industry is aging as a whole (and hopefully maturing in
the process). So if you ask the question 10 years later, there will be a lot
more developers in the 40+, 50+, 60+ buckets than today.

------
mvindahl
"The median U.S. worker is 42. However, StackOverflow’s survey on age shows
that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?"

I think most of this is due to the simple fact that software development has
been a steadily growing profession for decades. Thus, the "population pyramid"
of software engineers will very much be a pyramid and older developers will be
proportionally scarce. If you want to make meaningful predictions about your
personal likelihood of staying in software development beyond a certain age,
you'd need to slice the numbers differently.

I believe that once the number of software engineers stabilizes, the age
distribution will become more similar to other fields. Some will leave the
field during their career due to changes of interest or due to life throwing
them curveballs. But a lot will stay.

I'm 43, BTW. Still find software development and tech enjoyable.

------
raister
What about Linus Torvalds? Born: Linus Benedict Torvalds, December 28, 1969
(age 47), Helsinki, Finland I guess he's still coding, right? Does it count?

~~~
bluedino
Fabrice Bellward is 45, John Carmack is 46. Michael Abrash is probably in his
mid-50's. Rob Pike, Guido Von Rossum, and Larry Wall are all still programming
and they're in their 60's.

I think it's safe to say you won't magically lose your programming ability as
you get older.

~~~
jimktrains2
But you do lose the patience to keep using what amounts to the reinvention of
the wheel and having the same problems over and over, and you do lose much of
your free time to other responsibilities, which manifests itself in not having
the time to play with every new tech under the sun.

~~~
blueatlas
I agree, but I think you lose that patience for reinvention in about year 6,
not year 21. So, dealing with it becomes part of being a software developer.
If you can't, you won't get to year 7.

And yes, there are more responsibilities with age, which means you also have
to improve your time management. But, that's not unique to software
developers. Waiting to see how new technology evolves before jumping on the
band wagon is a good time management strategy for software developers.

------
larryfreeman
I turn 50 this year. Learning clojure and competing on Kaggle. :-) Just
completed a Machine Learning Engineer nanodegree on Udacity.

------
memracom
Lot's of scientists and engineers and physicians are still doing what they
know best. These kinds of knowledge and skills do not go away with age, and
since practitioners of these arts are constantly learning new things, and
looking for better solutions to problems, people in these fields often work
until the very day that death catches up to them.

Programmers tend to be just like these other STEM like professions. Although
with age we tend also to broaden our horizons a bit, perhaps into genomics or
massively scalable systems or new approaches to cyber security.

------
ausjke
“Over 30 years, I had to relearn almost everything about every 4 years more or
less. I work with a team of six developers from ages 48 to 56. All of us have
totally retrained our skills from 3 to 8 times.” . I have been doing embedded
coding for years, which does not need train myself every four years, but
still, keep learning is the key, age plays its role, but not as important as
keeping learning.

------
christocracy
45, self-employed. I create and sell an iOS/Android plugin for use with
Cordova, React Native and NativeScript apps. I love my job.

------
kabdib
My father-in-law retired at 75; he was writing embedded systems for machines
involved in chip manufacture.

I'm 56 now. I'm just going to go until I can't do it any more; 75 would be
great. Writing software and working with hardware is pretty awesome.

Consider how fortunate we are, who have found successful professions that we
enjoy -- many people don't get that opportunity.

------
bungie4
57, I build and maintain 911 (911, E911, V911), Telematics, Alarm, PERS and
custom SIP programming systems. On any given day my job is a software
developer, dba, systems analyst, process analyst and data analyst, sysadmin.
Not mention fire putter outer and consult with outside companies to best
implement their requirements.

But I'd rather be out riding my motorcycle.

------
cryptonector
Eh? 40?!

Most of my developer colleagues are over 40. No one thinks less of them for
it.

On the contrary, an experienced developer is someone who has at least a good
fifteen years under their belt. That usually mean "over 40". That experience
manifests in ways such as not reinventing the wheel (a favorite, unintentional
pass-time for the young and inexperienced).

------
joeevans1000
This whole topic is so interesting to me. Software programming is actually, in
reality, a mind numbing process involving extremely repetitive actions. Thanks
to Hollywood and the fact that technology is transforming our world (not
programmers... technology) the myth of the programmer as an intellect has
flourished. That is true for _most_ programmers; there are brilliant
programmer of all ages who make the tools the rest use, and that's another
topic altogether.

The reality is that young programmers are popular not because they're
brilliant, but because they are more willing to engage in repetitive tasks for
long hours. The idea that older people don't have the intellectual chops is
total BS; it's rather that as people get older they lose interest in
unrewarding endlessly repetitive tasks. That is to say, they become more
intelligent about how they are going to spend their time and their life.

------
tluyben2
I am early 40s and have been coding professionally for 25 years; I will never
stop doing it as I like it and it keeps me up to date with my
colleagues/employees so I can help them and support them where needed. I spend
a lot less time worrying about frameworks, programming languages etc then I
used to. I practically deliver things my companies need. In my spare time I
program as well; working on formal verification, development tools & games.
For me it is just creating something from nothing that drew me into
programming the around 34 years ago and I have not found anything that works
that powerful on me.

I notice, with every year passing, that I need less and less time actually
behind my computer and typing to write more and better software. Which is
great as I don't like the typing part all too much :)

------
infosecdude64
52 here and code everyday, some for work, some for personal development, but
most because I enjoy it. I am also manage a security engineering team for a
living. I've been coding since I was 12ish. Most of what I code in now is
Python for work and Swift and Java for mobile development, which I find a hell
of a lot of fun. Mostly making tutor apps for my kids studies.

What I find interesting is that when I walk into a meeting with younger
developers they immediately assume I only know cobol or rpg and not the
various stacks I work with. Once we start working with them on securing their
code they realize what experience brings to the table. It's hard to believe
that there are still some programmers out there that don't know what cross
site scripting is, or how to prevent SQL injection etc.

------
rbreve
42 Still coding and loving it

------
mcv
Am I in the top 13% at Stackoverflow? I had no idea, but I'm going to use this
as a new source of pride, just because I can.

I don't consider 40+ very old for a programmer. My father was 65 when he
retired from professional programming, and at first continued working on an
open source project (though that now seems to have stopped). I've always seen
plenty of older programmers. Only at the few startups where I worked was I one
of the oldest programmers, but even there the demographics get more balanced
as the company grows.

The weird stories about Silicon Valley's love for inexperienced programmers
where 30 is apparently old, sound weird and alien to me. I get better as I get
older and more experienced.

------
agentgt
I'm reluctant to weight in as I'm only 36 and well not terribly impressive.
However as the owner of a company I must say programming is so much more
relaxing than dealing with people... well mainly just people external of our
company and family.

There is something extremely cathartic about programming. I'm not sure I can
ever fully describe it. All I know is when I have to talk to a customer or
partner I occasionally think... god I wish I was programming right now... even
in Perl or PHP... anything.

The irony is I actively seek conversation as I always want to improve our
company but about 20 minutes in and I start feeling uncomfortable.

The thought of never programming again is a scary thought to me.

------
dondenoncourt
I'm 57 and I "Can't Stop Coding" as I'm still having too much fun. Whenever I
stop having fun... I change programming jobs. I wrote about this in a blog
post ([http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-
tech...](http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/)) that
was widely read. I will say, however, that I have seen a lot of developers
become obsolete mostly because they stayed with the same company (and
programming language) for too long or ignored opportunities to stay abreast of
technology.

------
dondenoncourt
I'm 57 and I "Can't Stop Coding" as I'm still having too much fun. Whenever I
stop having fun... I change programming jobs. I wrote about this in a blog
post ([http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-
tech...](http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/)) that
was widely read. I will say, however, that I have seen a lot of developers
become obsolete mostly because they stayed with the same company (and
programming language) for too long or ignored opportunities to stay abreast of
technology.

------
zwieback
I'm 51, still codeing almost every day and I use SO a lot. I used to
contribute more, when it started, but lately use it more as a reference.

Didn't know about the survey - would have probably filled it out, actually.

I feel it's pretty easy to keep up with new technologies when necessary, since
I don't have to relearn the basics and almost always have a reference point as
in "oh X is similar to what we used to call Y in Z".

One huge shift for me is distribution - as the browser is now almost capable
as a general UI it's easier to not worry about OSes, installers, versioning,
etc. This is true even for people who primarily don't work on web apps.

------
pyrophane
I have to wonder how well the SO survey reflects the overall dev population. I
could imagine, for example, more experienced devs spending less time on SO, or
being less likely to respond to a surveys in general.

------
castle-bravo
60 in 2017 => 20 in 1977. How many programming jobs were there in 1977?
Plenty, sure, but not to the extent we see today. Is it really suprising that
a brand-new industry is also full of young people?

------
dwarman
creak. 69 here, still employed and coding etc, started in 1967, spent too many
years having to make it up as I went along to specialize. If anything that
specialty might be embedded systems, but not only. I would definitely guess my
demographic is small. I find SO sometimes useful where my Google-fu fails me,
but every so often I also get to ask the developer of the language/whatever
directly instead. We're all about that age now, and it's a small and shrinking
community.

------
m23khan
For anybody who attending a community college or University for technical
courses, you would have realized that overwhelming majority of your Professors
(aka computer scientists) are 40+ with a large chunk being 55+

I think human beings have infinite capacity to grow intelligent - that is
until our bodies start shutting down (e.g. Alzheimer) but nobody knows at what
age that happens (it can happen when a person is in their 20s or 80s or may
never happen until one day the person simply stops breathing).

------
foobarge
50 and coding. There's nothing more satisfactory that carefully crafted code.
Or maybe just releasing something and mostly never looking back because it.
just. works.

------
yodsanklai
41\. I learned programming when I was 8 (basic on a C64) and I have as much
fun programming today as I've ever had. Besides, there's no doubt I'm a better
programmer today than I was 5 or 10 years ago and I keep learning new things.

Actually, I'm more worried about ageism than about the decline of my
abilities. I work in academia, but I wonder if I could get a software engineer
position if I wanted to.

------
huangc10
"Age Ain't Nothing but a Number" \- Aaliyah

Anyone who is willing to learn and accept new technologies, the above quote
holds true.

~~~
fiftyacorn
"Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability."
David Brent

------
ChicagoDave
Logical analysis of a problem and its implementation into a computer system is
a "high skill". There are programmers who can do the job and then there are
people who actually innately think logically.

I'm betting the older devs (like myself) are the ones who have had that innate
logic skill since they were born.

Everyone else moved on to management.

Just a theory.

------
linuxhansl
Hey... I'll soon be 50. I've been an engineer, architect, and a VP. I still
write code. And why would I stop? Writing code is fun.

Does a driver stop driving at age 40? Or a Dr. stop being a Dr.?

I can identify bad patterns both in code and designs as well as teams that
escape many younger engineers and managers.

------
skookum
Putting aside the question of what reality the 13% statistic in this survey
might be representative of... When one looks at how much this industry has
grown since today's 40 year-olds entered the job market, my surprise at the
13% number is at how high it is, not how low.

------
intrasight
My goal is to be the last programmer standing who started on IBM punch cards
;)

By the way, I was at an Azure Bootcamp on Saturday (great event!) and there
was a 70+ year old there with his laptop doing the labs.

Programming and exercise are two of the three best ways to stay young.

~~~
midhunsezhi
> Programming and exercise are two of the three best ways to stay young.

What in your opinion is the third one? (Starting curious?).

~~~
intrasight
Sex

------
alkonaut
I'm 38 and have coded ~30 years, professionally for half that. That's 15 years
into a career of perhaps 45 years. A third! I can't believe I'm even worrying
about being "old" in the business.

It's not a young man's game.

------
gravelc
I started coding after 40, as I needed the skill set to do my other job
properly (molecular biologist). Love it, with the added advantages my job is
more secure and higher paying.

Don't think I'll be stopping any time soon.

------
jimiray
49, write code every day. The whole SO thing mistifies me. I really think the
survey skews, because "graybeards", don't waste time filling out surveys and
they know how to RTFM to get answers.

------
avitzur
50, and still programming on the same codebase I started when I was 18.

------
cdelsolar
I'm 33 and don't really like the idea of going into management. This is an
encouraging article (and comments).

------
JustSomeNobody
46 this year and still happily coding.

------
rdeckard0104
I read the title and call only think of Frank Reynolds.

------
faragon
40s, and programming a bit better every day! :-)

------
iblaine
I came across a graybeard in an interview recently who refused to take a
coding challenge and cited his experience instead. He did not advance through
the interview process.

~~~
closure
A "graybeard"?

I think he made the right choice there.

~~~
iblaine
I'm a graybeard so far be it from me to pass judgement. If you're applying for
$300k/yr architect level job, then you should be good at every level of
software development, including writing it.

------
known
Experience + Passion = Invaluable

------
jordache
in 2017 are there 60 yr old front end devs?

------
the_cat_kittles
isnt this all just an artifact of the exploding popularity being in the 90's?

