4 ms·

How much of your career was contracting, if any? Were you an employee of Google? I have heard Google is probably the best of the SV tech giants when it comes to

How much of your career was contracting, if any? Were you an employee of Google? I have heard Google is probably the best of the SV tech giants when it comes to age discrimination, FWIW. I think contracting is a lot different and in that case more experienced consultants are preferred over younger ones where as it is the opposite when it comes to permanent employment. The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning. As if knowing how to design and write software isn't enough for a solid career, we must learn the "newest" programming paradigm, latest js framework, etc. But this gets in to deeper issues of our profession that allows ageism. Edit: Just looked at your website and it looks like you are 100% a contractor... Again, I think they are 2 very different labor markets for contractors and employees.

marcosdumay 11y ago
> The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning. As if knowing how to design and write software isn't enough for a solid career, we must learn the "newest" programming paradigm, latest js framework, etc. Things change, people do discover better ways to work, and not knowing fads does impact one's ability to work in a team. I'm in my mid 30's and I've already seen better sets of technologies appear with order of magnitude improvements twice. And I expect to claim one more time when the current fad of strict but flexible languages get sustainable.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
re: "The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning." I believe that in many fields it is important to keep learning, not just in software development. 20 years ago one of the brightest developers I knew made the case that object oriented programming was the 'final paradigm' and that we didn't need any other model for organizing code and data. Now, I would be tempted to say that functional programming is the final paradigm, except I know better than to make predictions. I absolutely agree with you that learning many frameworks is probably not a good use of our time. "Just in time learning" of frameworks is usually good enough but knowing a few programming languages, and occasionally learning a new one makes sense.
- djb_hackernews 11y ago
  Right, and I think you are anecdote after anecdote of what is wrong with our profession. I wish I could put that more gently but this is something I'm pretty passionate about. I'm definitely not advocating for the end of all learning and I hope you'd give my message a more charitable interpretation. The idea that OO was new 20 years ago or functional programming is new today is completely backwards and is the attitude that ensures that it looks like our profession is running around with its head cut off for the next 20 years and ultimately contributes to the ageism that does exist in our industry. I'm extremely happy for you that you've found a niche as a contractor but I think you'd experience it more and understand the stress people feel if you were to apply for full time employment. I appreciate your reservations on proclaiming functional programming the final paradigm, but why can't we just proclaim that a solid foundation in the pillars of computation is all one needs and as long as the tools and frameworks we use from one project to the next are built on those pillars then we can accomplish things at greater speeds and at larger scale?
  - mark_l_watson 11y ago
    I used a functional programming style in Scheme and Common Lisp starting in the 1980s (and wrote books published by Springer-Verlag for each language 20+ years ago) so I do know the history. I really don't think that there is a final programming paradigm. The greatest thing I have seen today is news of a more programmable quantum computer. There is a lot of room for new ideas in programming languages for quantum computing. I think there is a lot of headroom also for type inference applied to dynamic language like Ruby where entire programs are automatically type checked. Computer science progress is in general accelerating rapidly, not just a few high profile areas like deep learning. Exciting times!
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Yes. The time to put energy in is when there's truly a new paradigm at work. Not when it's just another version of something you've already seen a half-dozen times before. Bootstrap? Cool. Maybe follow that up with 1 or 2 other grid systems. But if you start chasing every layout framework coming down the pike, you're wasting your time. Same goes for imperative vs. functional programming. There's a big difference. You should know that. I think where the problem arises is when there's some new cool version of the same thing. You probably already know how it plays out, so your rational response is to not bother. But if you don't have it on your resume, you're going to be doing some fast talking. There's a difference between learning in order to execute and learning in order to impress. If you want to stay in coding, sadly, you gotta keep learning. And the things you learned all have to do with marketing yourself, not being a better programmer. I think that's the part that sucks most about getting older as a coder -- watching the community walk away from solution delivery in order to intellectually amuse itself with 4 or 5 year fads, which usually involve a cool video and a ton of hidden complexity.

marcosdumay 11y ago

> The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning. As if knowing how to design and write software isn't enough for a solid career, we must learn the "newest" programming paradigm, latest js framework, etc. Things change, people do discover better ways to work, and not knowing fads does impact one's ability to work in a team. I'm in my mid 30's and I've already seen better sets of technologies appear with order of magnitude improvements twice. And I expect to claim one more time when the current fad of strict but flexible languages get sustainable.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

re: "The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning." I believe that in many fields it is important to keep learning, not just in software development. 20 years ago one of the brightest developers I knew made the case that object oriented programming was the 'final paradigm' and that we didn't need any other model for organizing code and data. Now, I would be tempted to say that functional programming is the final paradigm, except I know better than to make predictions. I absolutely agree with you that learning many frameworks is probably not a good use of our time. "Just in time learning" of frameworks is usually good enough but knowing a few programming languages, and occasionally learning a new one makes sense.

djb_hackernews 11y ago
Right, and I think you are anecdote after anecdote of what is wrong with our profession. I wish I could put that more gently but this is something I'm pretty passionate about. I'm definitely not advocating for the end of all learning and I hope you'd give my message a more charitable interpretation. The idea that OO was new 20 years ago or functional programming is new today is completely backwards and is the attitude that ensures that it looks like our profession is running around with its head cut off for the next 20 years and ultimately contributes to the ageism that does exist in our industry. I'm extremely happy for you that you've found a niche as a contractor but I think you'd experience it more and understand the stress people feel if you were to apply for full time employment. I appreciate your reservations on proclaiming functional programming the final paradigm, but why can't we just proclaim that a solid foundation in the pillars of computation is all one needs and as long as the tools and frameworks we use from one project to the next are built on those pillars then we can accomplish things at greater speeds and at larger scale?
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I used a functional programming style in Scheme and Common Lisp starting in the 1980s (and wrote books published by Springer-Verlag for each language 20+ years ago) so I do know the history. I really don't think that there is a final programming paradigm. The greatest thing I have seen today is news of a more programmable quantum computer. There is a lot of room for new ideas in programming languages for quantum computing. I think there is a lot of headroom also for type inference applied to dynamic language like Ruby where entire programs are automatically type checked. Computer science progress is in general accelerating rapidly, not just a few high profile areas like deep learning. Exciting times!
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Yes. The time to put energy in is when there's truly a new paradigm at work. Not when it's just another version of something you've already seen a half-dozen times before. Bootstrap? Cool. Maybe follow that up with 1 or 2 other grid systems. But if you start chasing every layout framework coming down the pike, you're wasting your time. Same goes for imperative vs. functional programming. There's a big difference. You should know that. I think where the problem arises is when there's some new cool version of the same thing. You probably already know how it plays out, so your rational response is to not bother. But if you don't have it on your resume, you're going to be doing some fast talking. There's a difference between learning in order to execute and learning in order to impress. If you want to stay in coding, sadly, you gotta keep learning. And the things you learned all have to do with marketing yourself, not being a better programmer. I think that's the part that sucks most about getting older as a coder -- watching the community walk away from solution delivery in order to intellectually amuse itself with 4 or 5 year fads, which usually involve a cool video and a ton of hidden complexity.