4 ms·

Even if it makes sense for a single company not to hire an old developer, we are losing so much values as an industry if we invest all this money into teaching

Even if it makes sense for a single company not to hire an old developer, we are losing so much values as an industry if we invest all this money into teaching valuable lessons to devs, then throwing them away and letting newer kids make the same mistakes.

sbuttgereit 11y ago
Yes and no. A guy/gal who spent a decade or two dealing with RPG on a 400 will have judgments contextually relevant to that technology environment. His experience and judgments will have limited applicability to say microservice based architectures on AWS. Yes there will be some generalities that will apply everywhere, but probably not enough to make up for the deficiencies of limited experiences outside of that 400 comfort zone. In fact, some of that prior experience may well prove harmful rather than beneficial in a different environment with different strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately technology is unlike some professions like, say, warehouse management or construction where techniques evolve with time, but there are more commonalities from one decade to the next. Technology sees highly disruptive change and so I would still argue that without keeping current in your knowledge, your experience has a very short half-life.
- gaius 11y ago
  No it isn't, it really isn't. Take any website you like, it's a form for you to enter data to be stored into a database, and reports you can run to see this data. Facebook, Amazon, you name it. So it displays in a web browser rather than a 3270 terminal, that's the only difference, and it's a trivial one. Incidentally, what you call "microservices on AWS" is architecturally identical to how mainframes worked in the 1970s, you would do it with CICS. Much of the computer science, algorithms and datastructures, in every day use, were discovered in the 70s if not before. So either you have very limited experience of technology, or this is just ageism.
  - workitout 11y ago
    Well said, I stumbled across virtualization in the early 2000s and rediscovered what had been invented in the 60s. In the 80si created a compression algorithm only to find out it had been invented in the 60s. When I was under 30 I assumed everyone over 30 was brilliant and the often were. People under 30 today assume everyone over 30 is an idiot.
  - sbuttgereit 11y ago
    If you want to take generalities sure, nothing ever changes. We store data, we use electricity, etc. I can generalize away any detail and make myself look clever, too, but I also know the operating realities of those technologies of which I spoke involve details which are not so trivially disposed of and in practice they matter. Are there analogs between these technologies? Can we see echos of the green screen paradigm when we load a web page? Sure. But that's a long stretch from saying that implementation details are close enough to even say a majority of the information relevant from the old 400 days. As for me, I've run AS/400 shops (back when it was the AS400, but we did use newfangled 5250 emulators), been responsible for development in companies implementing highly distributed client/server based products, and most recently I've been involved in developing back end systems for web and iPhone applications (and, yes, on AWS in microservicey ways). I've been around technology plenty. I can tell you, too, that my early mistakes with AWS were precisely because I allowed my prior monolithic systems experience take too much precedence in my judgments when I first approached it. It was not the same. I needed to learn the new lessons; perhaps my only advantage was I recognized it quickly and recovered. It's not ageism, however, but a realism that recognizes that not all experience is the same or applicable to every situation: it takes continuous professional development to make that experience worth a shit. However, I can understand why you'd be a little overly defensive in your response however... being a developer of a certain age. Don't worry. I'm about the same age as you, as are many of my colleagues, and I don't think we're too worried about finding work.
    - gaius 11y ago
      If you can persuade your customers every few years that they need to reinvent the wheel and call the same things by new buzzwords, then you are all set for a lucrative career, you are correct. But sooner or later the wheels will come off this gravy train. I'll be fine - will you?
      - girvo 11y ago
        You didn't address any of your parents points there, and instead make vague "you're doomed" threats.

sbuttgereit 11y ago

Yes and no. A guy/gal who spent a decade or two dealing with RPG on a 400 will have judgments contextually relevant to that technology environment. His experience and judgments will have limited applicability to say microservice based architectures on AWS. Yes there will be some generalities that will apply everywhere, but probably not enough to make up for the deficiencies of limited experiences outside of that 400 comfort zone. In fact, some of that prior experience may well prove harmful rather than beneficial in a different environment with different strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately technology is unlike some professions like, say, warehouse management or construction where techniques evolve with time, but there are more commonalities from one decade to the next. Technology sees highly disruptive change and so I would still argue that without keeping current in your knowledge, your experience has a very short half-life.

gaius 11y ago
No it isn't, it really isn't. Take any website you like, it's a form for you to enter data to be stored into a database, and reports you can run to see this data. Facebook, Amazon, you name it. So it displays in a web browser rather than a 3270 terminal, that's the only difference, and it's a trivial one. Incidentally, what you call "microservices on AWS" is architecturally identical to how mainframes worked in the 1970s, you would do it with CICS. Much of the computer science, algorithms and datastructures, in every day use, were discovered in the 70s if not before. So either you have very limited experience of technology, or this is just ageism.
- workitout 11y ago
  Well said, I stumbled across virtualization in the early 2000s and rediscovered what had been invented in the 60s. In the 80si created a compression algorithm only to find out it had been invented in the 60s. When I was under 30 I assumed everyone over 30 was brilliant and the often were. People under 30 today assume everyone over 30 is an idiot.
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  If you want to take generalities sure, nothing ever changes. We store data, we use electricity, etc. I can generalize away any detail and make myself look clever, too, but I also know the operating realities of those technologies of which I spoke involve details which are not so trivially disposed of and in practice they matter. Are there analogs between these technologies? Can we see echos of the green screen paradigm when we load a web page? Sure. But that's a long stretch from saying that implementation details are close enough to even say a majority of the information relevant from the old 400 days. As for me, I've run AS/400 shops (back when it was the AS400, but we did use newfangled 5250 emulators), been responsible for development in companies implementing highly distributed client/server based products, and most recently I've been involved in developing back end systems for web and iPhone applications (and, yes, on AWS in microservicey ways). I've been around technology plenty. I can tell you, too, that my early mistakes with AWS were precisely because I allowed my prior monolithic systems experience take too much precedence in my judgments when I first approached it. It was not the same. I needed to learn the new lessons; perhaps my only advantage was I recognized it quickly and recovered. It's not ageism, however, but a realism that recognizes that not all experience is the same or applicable to every situation: it takes continuous professional development to make that experience worth a shit. However, I can understand why you'd be a little overly defensive in your response however... being a developer of a certain age. Don't worry. I'm about the same age as you, as are many of my colleagues, and I don't think we're too worried about finding work.
  - gaius 11y ago
    If you can persuade your customers every few years that they need to reinvent the wheel and call the same things by new buzzwords, then you are all set for a lucrative career, you are correct. But sooner or later the wheels will come off this gravy train. I'll be fine - will you?
    - girvo 11y ago
      You didn't address any of your parents points there, and instead make vague "you're doomed" threats.