
Ask HN: Any hackers over 60? 70? - GuiA
Are you still employed or retired? How does one&#x27;s passion and aptitude for hacking evolve towards this part of one&#x27;s life?
======
lutusp
> Ask HN: any hackers over 60? 70?

I'm 68, and I should add that "hacker" meant something different when I first
heard it used. :)

> Are you still employed or retired?

I'm retired, but I still program for enjoyment. I have a line of free Android
apps published:

[https://play.google.com/store/search?q=lutus&c=apps](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=lutus&c=apps)

> How does one's passion and aptitude for hacking evolve towards this part of
> one's life?

If anything, programming has become more important to me as I have gotten
older, for the same reason that mathematics has greater appeal to a maturing
mind -- it represents a rational counterpoint to a world that, over time,
seems to make less sense.

~~~
milani
The answer to the last question depends on the geolocation. In developing
countries, people won't enjoy programming when they get old, there are too
many problems to solve in real-life that don't allow them to do what they
like:/

~~~
lutusp
Very true. It's a shame because IMHO programming can be a mixture of
recreation and productive work. After retirement, the recreational aspect may
come to the fore.

Also, I've met many programmers who were obliged to program with such
persistence and effort that over time they learned to hate it. This is a risk
with anything one chooses to do for a living, which is why it's prudent to
avoid doing things for a living that you love.

------
nkoren
My father isn't a HN regular, but he's 70 and is very much a hacker. He
founded a software startup (www.imatest.com) when he was 63, and now has a
dozen employees and is working harder than ever as its CTO. His passion for
hacking hasn't waned in the slightest -- if anything, it's increased by orders
of magnitude since he retired from his day job. His hacking aptitude within
his own narrow speciality (imaging science) also seems to be undiminished.

I do sometimes notice that the _breadth_ of his hacking aptitude might be less
than in a younger person; he doesn't always grok new concepts as quickly when
they are outside his immediate area of interest. Eg., it took me a long while
to convince him that automated testing was a really important part of modern
software development. But I can understand how this would seem quite alien to
somebody who first learned to program on punch-cards -- and since he's happy
to delegate things beyond his immediate area of focus, it hasn't been a
problem.

So, anecdotally: medical issues permitting, there's absolutely no reason you
need to scale back on your _passion_ for hacking passion as you age, although
the _breadth_ of your hacking might need to narrow somewhat.

~~~
cpach
That’s very inspiring. Mad props to your father!

~~~
nkoren
Yeah, honestly he's kind of my hero. Seriously proud of what he's done in his
second career.

~~~
ekoswibowo
That really inspiring. I have been wondering about the same. Now that I am in
my mid thirty, and I never waned back on my passion on new things (new
programming languages!), I am sure that in my late years, I will still develop
the same passion as I am today.

Say my regards to your father

------
edw519
58, been very active on HN since the beginning, 7 years ago.

My passion and aptitude for hacking are higher than ever!

I struggled all day yesterday, trying to organize parameters to feed an engine
to propagate data that would generate code for a new project. Woke up at 4
a.m. with a hypothesis, and built a working prototype before breakfast. What a
great day already.

I have written over a million lines of commercial code since 1979, still work
serving customers pretty much full time and have enough time left for another
20 to 30 hours per week on personal projects. I have at least one or two more
start ups in me, for sure.

If this industry was like it was when I started, before PCs and the internet,
and I had to sling COBOL for enterprises, I'd probably be a greeter at Walmart
now, planning for social security. But fortunately our world has changed and
it's so much more interesting and fun. If I ever do retire, I'll probably
still keep building stuff forever.

The 2 best things: software is _everywhere_ and involved in _everything_ now.
I can't imagine not finding an interesting application. And perhaps more
importantly, things change so fast, there's always something newer and
possibly more interesting right around the corner. (I wish I had more time to
explore node, go, and some more frameworks, but I'm so busy...)

Between building software, riding my bike, drinking great beer, and getting
laid every once in a while, I still feel like 25. I don't want it to ever end.

I think anyone who builds software should feel like I do. I hope most of you
do. Prepare for a nice long ride!

~~~
hello_newman
"Between building software, riding my bike, drinking great beer, and getting
laid every once in a while, I still feel like 25. I don't want it to ever
end."

I love that line. That is so incredibly inspiring. You really are living the
dream.

------
copx
Ken Thompson [1] is about as old as modern computing, and can in fact claim to
have partially invented it. He is over 70 and last time I checked he was still
working for Google. His most recent project well-known to the public is the Go
programming language. So it is certainly possible.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson)

~~~
brudgers
_about as old as modern computing_

Because Knuth is five years his senior?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Key word is "about."

------
dwarman
I started age 19 in 1967. Maybe even earlier. Dropped untrained into the deep
end commissioning 4100 computers at Elliott Bros near London, and turned out I
could swim. Passion - always had the feeling of "You actually want to _pay_ me
to do this?"

Now I am 66, still fully employed, latest thing you might have heard (of) is
the WiiU Audio engine. For unrelated reasons I went through a battery of
cognitive function tests a couple of years ago and came out sharper than I was
at 19 by at least a full sigma. I have no plans to retire.

I would add Don Knuth to the the honors list. And Minsky. Tony Hoare. Ted
Nelson. Alan Kay. The original Homebrew Club members are getting up there. And
about 100 others I know but you probably won't recognize. A peer group in
which I am merely average.

As to selectivity and numbers. Yes, there have been programmers since WWII.
But mot that many. So my age group has far fewer members than the upcoming
geriatric programmer generation. But I have noticed one very encouraging
feature we share: barring serious health issues (and even in spite of in some
cases), a high percentage are still very active and passionate. No comment on
causality, could easily be that it takes a active mind of a peculiar bent to
get into the field in the first place and these just last, or it could be that
the mental excersize it takes to keep relevant keeps the mind young, or both.
But I'm pretty sure I won't last long if I have to stop doing it.

------
Blahah
Peter Murray Rust [0] is in his 70s and still writes code most days [1], and
is a hacker in the original sense. He's retired from his professorship but
still runs an active research group making awesome software to liberate
knowledge from scientific publications, and he runs the Open Knowledge
Foundation and various other groups. I'll ask him to respond himself.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Murray-
Rust](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Murray-Rust)

[1] [https://bitbucket.org/petermr](https://bitbucket.org/petermr)

~~~
petermurrayrust
Greetings to HN! I am very proud to have been featured in HN at least twice.

I take inspiration from a quote last year from Nellie Kroes - European
Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. She's an iconic fighter for Openness -
goes on Spanish hack camps with 14-year olds. Hopefully accurate:

"I'm 71. I don't do this because I have to but because I want to". [PMR was
also 71 at that stage].

I take "hack" as a very positive concept - from its roots in MIT and the
Hacker Manifesto up to HN and "hackdays" and "hackathons".

I started my communal chemistry code ca 30 years ago - in FORTRAN - and it's
gone through C++ (including f2c), and now Java. There have been six major
revisions of JUMBO.

I had the major epiphany about 15 years ago when I was writing molecular
display in Java3D (argh!). I realised I didn't have to do this all myself -
and so integrated the magnificent Jmol into the system. That led to the
culture or sharing the load and fighting the battles communally (standard
chemistry software is awful, highly prices and restrictive - one company will
sue you if the publish the output FORTRAN log file).

I shan't give my life history , but I have been incredibly fortunately to find
like-minded collaborators both locally and globally. Locally it came from Jim
Downing who just us about 9 years ago and showed us how to use all the right
ideas and tools (JUnit, maven, Jenkins (CI), Bitbucket, Stackoverflow, agile
(stand ups, dojos, etc.).

The great thing was that we shared the load. We met at the Panton Arms every
Friday lunch and would often work there in the afternoon. Yes, work - where
ideas would flow freely. The core of hacking is not writing the code but
working out what needs to be written.

We are committed to excellent software, not competitive academic impact-factor
points. That meant we could do things properly. FWIW our work has gone into
Cambridge Chemistry's submission for the evaluation process.

We're proud that many of our tools (OSCAR, OPSIN, ChemicalTagger, JUMBO) are
robust and distributed without major maintenance need. This is unique in
chemistry. As a result I catalysed a unique - zero-cash community - the Blue
Obelisk ([http://blueoblisk.org](http://blueoblisk.org) and Wikipedia). 20+
F/LOSS groups work in unplanned parallel ways and have created some of the
best chemical software.

We are now moving into a major effort to extract all scientific facts from the
current literature (contentmine.org just released). The major challenge will
be lawyers. If any Hackers want to take part in knowledge liberation we'd love
to hear from you.

~~~
peterwwillis
> The core of hacking is not writing the code but working out what needs to be
> written.

It's really difficult for me to get certain of my co-workers to work out what
needs to be written. Mostly it seems we discuss minutia and get off on
tangents rather than work out the whole thing; it's difficult to get them to
look at it from anything but a low level (arguments about how an API should
work takes an hour). Do you have any advice on how to get people to discuss
the work in a realistic, high level way?

~~~
petermurrayrust
Culture is difficult to build - either from scratch or from an established
base. I have practised mutual respect - a meritocracy. Although formally I was
a "group leader" or "supervisor" I regarded my colleagues - whether students
of research assistants as my peers.

I was prepared to be told when I was "wrong" and think about it. Gradually we
built a culture where the culture - as well as the people - determined what we
did and how we worked. My group reorganised how we ran weekly meetings and I
followed their practice. (Of course things like lab safety and secure practice
have to be taken ultra-seriously as do basic human relations - gender, race,
etc.).

I am very proud of the people who went through "my" / our group. They all went
into hi-tech IT - companies, scientific organisations and none into formal
academia. Most are in the UK and therefore directly contributing to our wealth
and my pension.

The Friday pub sessions are really valuable. Nothing as formal as an "away
day". It helped that many of us played cricket (I gave up two years ago - made
it to 70), and I introduced them to the Guardian crossword.

It depends very much on the goal of your group. If you have a chance to
develop new ways of doing things, do so. If there is no slack in the system
then the daily work is likely to turn out competent but no inspiring code.

If you can do one thing go on a Software Carpentry course (you might be able
to count it as training). If not, can you run a dojo? If your organisation
provides training you may be able to bring in someone (or travel) to provide
the experience. fresh views help.

Ultimately you have to aim for respect, and flexibility. I don't make major
mistakes or have failures - I have experiments which don't work out at the
time. JUMBO has been through 6 revisions over 20 years. I'm very lucky - I
have that luxury to keep going at something which isn't critical for my
income. When I was earning an income through consultancy/training I had to
make sure that I had some slack in which to learn.

Avoid individualism but try to give everyone space in which to make their own
identifiable contribution. I would normally start projects, then suggest that
group members worked =on them, and when the left, they retained the "guru-
ship" of the project.

------
ggreer
I'm happy for anyone who is productive past normal retirement age, but it's
important to be aware of what happens to our minds as we get older. I think
the examples in the comments are exceptions that prove the rule. The reason
for the dearth of older hackers is the same reason there are few people
running marathons at age 60 or 70: As we age, our bodies and minds degrade.
Exercise, nutrition, and (probably) drugs can slow the decline, but we don't
yet have the technology to turn back the clock.

The most depressing graph I've seen is figure 1[1] in _Images of the Cognitive
Brain Across Age and Culture_ [2]. It shows how our cognitive abilities
decline soon after we reach maturity. Starting in our 20s, we lose about 6 IQ
points per decade; more in our 70s and 80s. That means someone in the top 1%
in high school (IQ 135) would be down to average intelligence by the time they
were in their 80s.

On the bright side, the decline in raw cognitive horsepower is offset by gains
in knowledge. In fact, knowledge more than offsets it in most disciplines. Our
peak productivity is usually in our 40's and declines much more slowly than
one would expect[3].

Still, if you want to keep building cool stuff when you're older, it's
important to prepare _now_. The best thing you can do is stay healthy and
active. To return to the marathon analogy: A 55 year-old might not set a world
record, but with the right training, nutrition, and possibly performance-
enhancing drugs, they can beat >95% of people half their age.

Finally, to everyone mentioned in this thread: Well done! I hope to follow
your example.

1\.
[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_gxYAfFM1cj0/S6hXmZ4qtjI/A...](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_gxYAfFM1cj0/S6hXmZ4qtjI/AAAAAAAAAUc/mBtqICfKs2w/brainage.jpg)

2\. [http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-
wm/36842.pdf](http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/36842.pdf)

3\.
[http://resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pdf](http://resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pdf)

~~~
bane
I've noticed two things as I've grown older.

1\. Time just seems to move _sooo_ fast. When I was 6, 30 minutes seemed like
_forever_. Now as I close in on 40, 30 minutes feels like a handful of
breaths. I can easily spend 2 hours on something, feel like I made no progress
because the time is short. Even into my 20s, I felt like I could crank out
tons of things hour after hour. Now the work of a week feels like the work of
a day.

2\. I think why this happens is that I've noticed I feel like I take in more
space-time at once than I used to. Hypersmall details I used to obsess over
seem to blend into an entire scene. I'm gulping space-time rather than sipping
it. I think it's because I have much more experience and knowledge than I used
to that I just automatically filter out most things. "Bigger picture" isn't
just a word to me anymore. I've largely stopped thinking in hyper-local ways
and started thinking more strategically, in terms of systems rather than
components and in terms of aggregate behaviors rather than individual
behaviors, etc.

I have to consciously focus down my attention onto small, local concerns when
it used to just happen. When thinking about business ideas, I don't think as
much about smaller concerns like the technology stack or whatever, but where I
can take the entire idea over the next 5-10 years. Ideas grow like trees in my
mind stretching out for a decade without mush effort, but looking at an
individual leaf (which used to be easy), is exhausting.

It's given me a lot more understanding of what my parents are going through as
they age, things I never really understood when I was a precocious child, but
now make perfect sense. I don't know what they're going through now, but now
that I understand roughly the trajectory of my own mind and thinking, I can
kind of see how they're arriving at where they are.

~~~
chez17
Just to add to your second point, one of the reason that time moves faster is
that, in a sense, it is moving faster. When you're 10, a whole year is
increasing your life by 10%. That's a huge percentage of your life. By the
time your 60, that year is a much much smaller percentage. Thinking of it like
that, it's not surprising that 10% of your life seems longer than ~1%.

~~~
Dewie
I can't relate to this. The fact that you have lived for 23 rather than 10
years might make a single year feel less significant _in retrospect_ , but
there is no obvious connection to how you feel about that year when it is
actually happening.

~~~
e12e
What if you walk up a ladder? 1 meter isn't that far, but 2 meter is a lot
farther up. Difference between 10 and 11 meters -- can you even tell?

~~~
Dewie
I've tried (and failed) to run a marathon. It certainly didn't feel any
shorter as I progressed.

~~~
e12e
When it comes to measuring progress through life, I think walking is a better
image than running. Also, it's not really a dash towards the end, is it?

~~~
e12e
Thinking more about this, if you're running at a marathon, your concerned not
with how far you've come, but how far is left. Such a view of life isn't
likely to be very productive. I still think my point holds for your marathon
effort -- 1 meter after start is very different from 2 meters after start (or
say 50 and 100) -- however the difference between 1000m and 1001 (1050) -- not
really easily perceptible without some kind of aid?

------
jxf
He's not 60 yet, but Peter Norvig is 57 and shows no signs of slowing down. If
anything he's getting more prolific with age. It seems like every time he gets
on a plane he's hacking on something interesting:
[http://norvig.com/sudoku.html](http://norvig.com/sudoku.html)

------
DonGateley
I'll be 70 in November and am putting the finishing touches on a VST plugin
that can make any 'phone (head, ear, canal, etc.) I can measure sound like any
other 'phone I can measure with remarkable verisimilitude. The trick was not
the DSP (standard stuff, that, and part of what I once got paid to do) but in
devising a measurement system that worked across types. That part was
empirical and took more years and iterations than I'll admit to but without
retirement I wouldn't have had the time for all the experimentation that
finally nailed it.

I've got to say that my coding bug rate seems worse and debug time seems
substantially longer and more tedious than I remember. My first coding was
assembler for an IBM 7094 as a student at the University of Illinois some 50+
years ago. Been doing it ever since.

BTW, I'm looking for someone that can transfer the tech to a paid Android app.
Somebody 70ish would be way cool. Kernel level audio skills a must for global
filter insertion.

~~~
kenferry
That sounds like a great project! Kind of like colorspace calibration for
monitors applied to sound.

------
lohankin
57, employed. Latest hack: [https://github.com/tatumizer/circuit-
dart](https://github.com/tatumizer/circuit-dart)

Listening to good jazz helps to stay in shape(there's some scientific data
that proves music activates something in the brain, not sure what exactly, but
it seems to work :-).

As someone noted earlier in this thread, there's nothing new in programming
for the last 30-40 years. You just need to learn 100 tricks, you learn them
early, and then the age makes no difference. What changes is that you don't
think of career any more, and think about money much less, which makes you a
very bad candidate for bullshit work. You can imagine the consequences.

~~~
jpgvm
I really like this circuit concept for async programming. Did you come up with
the model yourself is or is it an implementation of a wider pattern?

~~~
lohankin
This is kind of homegrown concept, but unlikely to be entirely new. It has
connections to other concepts, but the devil is in details, and it was really
difficult to find good syntactic expression. I couldn't do it in any language
except dart (at least without ugly workarounds). In any case, it's doesn't
seem to be appreciated, I'm glad you like it, thanks!

------
beggi
While surely there are few hackers older than 60 or 70, the history of the
personal computer is still too young for the question to be a meaningful
indicator of how long people keep hacking. The Altair came out in 1975 meaning
that someone that was 20 at the time and started hacking on it right away is
only reaching 60 next year. The first mass-market personal computer (the
Macintosh) came out in 1984 and working with computers was still a niche at
that time. Those hackers that are over 60 now are either super early adopters
or those that started hacking late in life, so in any case a very small group.
I'm sure there will be plenty of hackers over 60 in a few decades :) - Also,
looking forward to fragging and playing Starcraft in the nursing home! :)

~~~
e12e
Then again, my dad, which was a sociology major, bought a vic 20 when it came
out, and proceeded to implement a system for bidding on construction contacts
in Quick Basic for first the Apricot and later the PC (Because at the time
there were no decent software for the task). I believe he took a part-time
computer science class at the local college in the 80s prior to writing that
piece of software.

He doesn't program any more, but the idea that you'd have to be 20 when you
started is just plain wrong. You could've been 40.

He also used to play with meccano and legos, and I remember we built a
traversing crane during a Christmas in the mid 80s (on ropes from the living
room to the kitchen, a spam of some 7 meters). If you were a hacker soul
before personal computing, it'd be quite easy to get into computers (and
realize that it would be important).

~~~
beggi
Of course, I agree with you. It's just by referencing the 20 year old age, I
was thinking about the circa age when the wide majority of people start their
careers (20-25). But like I said in my original comment, there are those
exceptions of cool people that started hacking late in life and your dad is
certainly one!

~~~
e12e
I still think the assumption that hacking started with programming is wrong,
there've been countless hackers, they were just generally confined to physical
media (eg: engineers). And I don't think making the transition towards
software wasn't all that radical for most.

[edit: typos]

~~~
beggi
Yes of course. I was referring to software hacking like the original post.

------
arh68
> _From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I
> became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some
> reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of
> attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and
> beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I
> will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so
> that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one
> hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at
> one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where
> every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants
> long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie._

\--Hokusai

~~~
arh68
... his take on Impostor syndrome is a bit backwards, too (:

> Constantly seeking to produce better work, he apparently exclaimed on his
> deathbed, _" If only Heaven will give me just another ten years... Just
> another five more years, then I could become a real painter."_

------
rch
My father probably qualifies too. In the early 80's we had a Bell Labs/Western
Electric Energy management system with home sensors and links to the electric
and gas companies. They used a Z80 microprocessor in a STD bus card rack. And
at no point in the last 30+ years has he ever been without projects or
machines to work on.

His skillset goes from the EPROM and PLC level, through C/C++, and on to
actual 20 ton open die forging. I've seen him take a break from debugging a
C++ driver for a hydraulic beam loader to replace live high voltage fuses with
a hot stick rather than wait for the power company. It really puts what we
refer to as 'full-stack' into perspective.

------
robertlf
I'm 57 but didn't start programming until I was 27 years old. My first summer
quarter at Purdue they still had punch card readers and I remember sitting in
the hall in the basement of the Math building waiting to have my deck read and
then pick up the green striped output paper in the adjoining room. The
following fall we had our first DEC VT 100 terminals.

I guess I would consider myself a hacker of sorts as I now work for myself
doing mobile web development with Python, JavaScript, and Django. I have to
work for myself because no one will hire someone my age.

------
geofffox
I am 63. I code sites. I build boxes. I touched my first computer terminal at
the NY World's Fair in '64\. Fortran on an IBM senior year in high school
67/68\. That was my first and last computer class.

I was on the Internet before the WWW.

I am 63, but immature for my age.

------
rozzie
I haven't spoken with him recently, but I believe that Dave's still the first
one in the office every morning, writing stunningly tight code and driving
innovation most recently in the Xbone hypervisor. The engineer's engineer.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler)

------
kabdib
My father-in-law retired at 75. He was writing firmware for Perkin Elmer chip
steppers. I've seen his code, it was pretty nice stuff.

One guy I met was 65 and about to start up another company. He was sharp and
definitely knew what he was doing.

The group I was in at Microsoft (Xbox) had David Cutler in it; I think he had
just turned 70. I didn't work with him closely, but he was definitely prolific
(also more than a bit controversial, politically, at MS, but he had mellowed
out quite a bit when I met him).

I'm 53 and have high hopes. :-)

~~~
Joeri
I don't know how much of it is true, but if even half of the anecdotes in
Showstoppers are true then Dave Cutler is indeed a force of nature to be
reckoned with.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0759285780?pc_redir=1396671731...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0759285780?pc_redir=1396671731&robot_redir=1)

~~~
wglb
Few of us have written one os, but he has written or been the main force
behind THREE.

------
s1gs3gv
I started as a software developer just around the time Intel released the
8080. I was in Bell Labs when Unix Version 7 was introduced. I was at IBM when
they released AIX. I now working in scala and clojure and am active in a
startup in the financial services and crypto-currency fields.

Do what you love, love what you do, throw in a generous helping of luck and
you can have a stimulating, productive and enjoyable professional life well
into your 70s if not later.

How does one's passion and aptitude for hacking evolve towards this part of
one's life ?

Experience rulez.

------
brudgers
Ward Cunningham and Charles [Chuck] Moore come immediately to mind as hackers
in their 60's and 70's respectively.

~~~
e12e
Came here to mention Moore, and especially color forth (a forth system that
uses colors to distinguish semantic meaning between variables and
verbs/command words etc). His eval blog of the new greenarray boards is full
of magnificent hackery, eg:

[http://www.colorforth.com/video.htm](http://www.colorforth.com/video.htm)

------
davidw
Not mentioned elsewhere: Richard Stallman is 61. I don't know how much actual
hacking he does these days vs advocacy, but whether you agree with his
politics or not, the dude is definitely a hacker.

------
SchizoDuckie
Great question. I'm in my 30's and I've wondered on more than one occasion
what we'll all be programming in 30 years. DNA? Nanobots? What will the web
look like? Will we be still hacking away in virtual reality when we're in
elderly homes, drifting away with the occulus rift 8.0 lenses in?

If anything, I'm excited at getting older and being able to see where all this
rapid evolution is taking us.

@People over 60 here: What is it like learning and keeping up with the flurry
of new technologies at your age? Do you find it more difficult to grasp with
age or does it get easier?

~~~
dvirsky
I'm "only" 39, but it's been 30 years since I've written my first line of
code. And I have to say that while things have changed a lot, the basics of
how it is to program and how you write code, are still the same. I find myself
applying techniques I've learned back then, and even though I haven't written
assembly since the 80s, the basic low-level understanding of how it all works
still serves me to this day. The main difference is maybe how accessible good
info is now. Back then each programming book was a treasure that was passed
around.

I often wonder how much of that will stay the same 30 years from now, and I
hope I'll still be hacking then. My bet is that we'll still have some versions
of programming languages we know today, maybe even Linux running it. But it
will be much more exciting if that won't be true :)

~~~
petermurrayrust
I've been through 50 years of "programming" with a major change each decade.
The key thing is to be in the company of young people.

It's harder to learn new things because you have to unlearn earlier ones. My
Java started by looking like FORTRAN, my Python now looks like Java.

It's critically important to use good Open tools. Eclipse is wonderful. I
could not work without JUnit and whenever I run into problems I use the
discipline of using tests to define the problem. I have learnt to "love" Maven
as I can't do without it. I could not live without Jenkins/Continuous
Integration.

The main problem is that all these add up, both in learning, installation and
support. When I "retired" my website in cambridge gradually decayed and an
upgrade to the OS meant Jenkins no longer worked. It's now back (thanks, Mark
Williamson) and has restored impetus in the chemistry coding.

You have to include time for exploration ("dead ends"). I jumped into
javascript when it first appeared - it wasted huge amounts of time as every
browsers "upgrade" was a disaster. I started Python and that was nearly as
bad. Now , 10+ years on, they're robust and I shall relearn them. Probably be
working alongside experts in a hackathon.

I believe in code review and am happy for others to review mine!

~~~
dvirsky
I find it that HackerNews itself, while it does waste a lot of my time reading
and toying with such "dead ends", keeps me on the edge of things. I've started
using Go because of posts and discussions here, and it's changed the way I do
my work in the past year.

------
einhverfr
I can't speak for myself I believe I have worked with some contributors to
LedgerSMB who are retired.

In general, I think one has to be careful about making generalizations here
regarding aptitude. LedgerSMB is hard to get into because with ERP/Accounting
software the domain knowledge requirements are significantly higher than the
fluid intelligence requirements and domain knowledge increases as we get
older. In LedgerSMB I have generally found that older programmers contribute
better code than younger programmers precisely for this reason. Some of the
biggest bugs we have ever had (the ones that caused us to pull 1.2.0 and
1.2.1) were caused by overlooking a critical part of domain knowledge.

So I dont think things get particularly worse. The fields of excellence may
change however.

------
danieltillett
I am not yet at this age, but the older I get the more I appreciate hacking.
It really keeps me from falling into the 'things were better when I was young'
hole that older people are prone to falling into. It is also really fun
learning new things all the time.

------
GnarfGnarf
65, last year I learned DirectX and wrote a 3D app in C++.

This year I'm learning Python for fun.

Never gets old :o)

------
canatan01
Not me, but I hope to still be hacking away when I am 60 or older. Maybe it is
actually good for the brain to keep at it, I don't know.

~~~
petermurrayrust
If you get a chance go on a Software Carpentry [1] course. I went on one 4
months ago and it changed my whole outlook. Greg Wilson take you through the
psychological aspects of programming - why you should break every hour - the
difference between "sip of tea" and "make a cup of tea". How your code relates
to short-term memory and much more.

Don't think "I know how to program". Even if you know the syntax and the
idioms you don't know everything. Simply going through a workshop will change
the way you think.

[1][http://software-carpentry.org](http://software-carpentry.org)

------
Swannie
John ffitch.

I was lucky enough to be taught by John. He believes he may have been one of
the first people to make computer music - spending precious compute cycles at
Cambridge with a speaker hooked up instead of an oscilloscope.

He's ~69, and last time we spoke a few years ago, he and some peers were still
writing and selling their compiler product
([http://www.codemist.co.uk/index.html](http://www.codemist.co.uk/index.html)),
John was still active in the Csound community (C dialect for computer music),
and dabbling with computer algebra.

Having known John outside of lectures (and meeting him at the age of ~58), I'd
say he has a childlike fascination with the world - constant curiosity and a
lot of enthusiasm. And also understanding that computer science is cyclical,
that rediscovery is part of life, and he could add deep experience each time
around.

------
blazespin
Upvoted this. Here is one of my personal heros:
[http://techland.time.com/2013/03/04/how-an-83-year-old-
inven...](http://techland.time.com/2013/03/04/how-an-83-year-old-inventor-
beat-the-high-cost-of-3d-printing/)

------
ludicast
Bob Martin (Uncle Bob) turned 60 a few years ago. He still programs and
laments that programmers move into management as they age.

------
inthefray
It's much better to work with a motivated senior hacker than an entitled brat
spewing delusions of their own grandeur.

------
brickcap
I am bookmarking this thread for times when I am down/ worried about my
future. So inspiring to hear from people who have been hacking for this long.

I don't think that ed wiessman(edw519) is 60 yet but his advice seems like
coming from someone who has been in the business of programming for centuries.

------
graycat
Hacking is easy and doesn't take a very sharp mind.

Computer science research is harder.

Math research is harder, still.

There are plenty of people well past 50 and, from their research publications,
still quite productive. For them, hacking is baby talk.

Richard Wagner? Late in his life he finished his four opera 'The Ring' and
wrote 'Parsifal'. All that work remains crown jewels of all of music and art.

People late in life are less likely to do hacking for a variety of reasons,
but that their mental capacity is not up to the challenge is not among the
reasons. What's so difficult about allocate-free, if-then-else, do-while,
call-return, try-catch, etc.? Trivial.

------
camus2
I really wish I can still code at 70!

~~~
cab_codespring
Why wouldn't you be able to? Unless you age really badly you should still be
just fine. Maybe at 90 you will just be too tired, but unless you get a brain
disease or some other kind of dementia you will still be the same as you are
now. Al lot of people work at 70 or older, it's recommended that you work
until 70 before you collect social security if your retirement funds are
lacking. You young kids think anything over 45 is ancient, well it's not, and
70 is "young" old age, and people are still perfectly capable.

------
clef
What kind of hacking are we talking about? Black/white hat? (Is there another
kind?)

~~~
tod222
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture%29)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic)

