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It isn't their fault for not knowing it; in the ideal world every programmer would start out with complete and perfect knowledge of everything there is to know
by c3534l 11y ago
It isn't their fault for not knowing it; in the ideal world every programmer would start out with complete and perfect knowledge of everything there is to know about their craft. No, it's up to older people with more experience to adequately communicate their experience to others. The responsibility of the younger programmers is to know when to listen.
It reminds me of my father who, close to retirement, had to switch companies led by a bunch of young whipper-snappers in their 40s. They had to solve certain problems that many of the older people had experienced ages ago and were really solved problems. But everyone was more interested in finding creative solutions, rather than just listen.
I hear chemists have a saying that you can save two weeks in the laboratory with an evening in the library.
Of course it's good to know these things. But there's simply going to be some things you know more about because you grew up in a different time than they did. That's not a real problem, that's just the way things are.
- smacktoward 11y ago> It's up to older people with more experience to adequately communicate their experience to others. The responsibility of the younger programmers is to know when to listen. The hitch is that the younger programmers are chasing the approval of VCs who actively encourage them to dismiss "older people" as clueless old fusts who can't think at Web Scale. (The VCs don't actually believe that, of course, especially as many of them are old programmers themselves. But since old programmers know how to read a term sheet and tend to demand things like sane working hours and pay/equity commensurate with their skill, it's in the VCs' interest for their portfolio companies to be cults of youth.)
- c3534l 11y agoThis may be, but then you should single that out as a problem, not place it on the relatively inexperienced not knowing the things you know.
- hueving 11y agoSomething doesn't work in your thesis. If old thinking were that valuable in a startup trying to make a new technology, VCs would insist on hiring some seasoned devs. One of the downsides of working in an industry for so long is that is molds the way you think about problems. Things you deem to be critical might not be anymore, etc. Things you've been burned by that you avoid like the plague might be really useful now in light of new hardware. When experimenting and building new things, years of experience can actually be a pretty big burden that is hard to shed.