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Yeah, for the vast majority of engineering programming is like selling shoes. You just need about 4 years experience and you pretty much know it all. Certain

Yeah, for the vast majority of engineering programming is like selling shoes. You just need about 4 years experience and you pretty much know it all. Certain skill sets are great for older folks though. Security, for example. You want to work with someone who has a long track record of being trustworthy. That being said, there is something compelling about an older engineer who constantly re-invents himself with the latest technology.

micaksica 10y ago
> Yeah, for the vast majority of engineering programming is like selling shoes. You just need about 4 years experience and you pretty much know it all. That's the point I'm trying not to make. Are you building a startup that's effectively a CRUD app? If so, sure, that's pretty much all you need and is why coder schools have become so prevalent - they get you to a practicing point that covers the bases of most small websites and very, very basic startups. Age and experience brings with it something vital: the ability to build long term pattern recognition of technology business cycles, the "all is old is new again", the ways that novel technologies may fall like their predecessors. This is not something you learn in a CS program or even a few years out of college. It's something you only learn by playing with tens of languages and mastering six or seven over decades, by constantly learning, by being part of those business cycles. This skillset is often discredited and is enormously valuable, but I believe it requires a tireless passion for novelty and modern technique to become a multiplier on skill.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Experience is more important if you are actually developing algorithms rather that making another app. It takes time and practice of genius to get a handle on required mathematics for AI, adaptive systems or advanced data structures. It is no accident that mathematicians are divided into super young genius and old bearded wizard camps.
- GarvielLoken 10y ago
  I disagree with "This is not something you learn in a CS program". Anyone who has taken a SICP course will know "all is old is new again". But in large I agree with you.
tigershark 10y ago
You will never "know it all" about programming. If you seriously think then you can learn all in 4 years I'm really wondering what kind of things are you working on.
- collyw 10y ago
  Node, Mongo and Angular would be my bet.
throwanem 10y ago
> You just need about 4 years experience and you pretty much know it all. No. After four years you know just about enough to inflict a really nasty case of the second-system effect on some unsuspecting customer.
tbenbrahim 10y ago
I have been programming for 30 years. I can look at code that is 10 years old and see how much I have improved in those 10 years. 26 year old code? It was a joke. I thought I knew it all back then, but for about the last 20 years, I have been working with the realization that I know less than 10% about this field. Your statement cannot be true unless you only work in the very limited scope of CRUD apps. Even then, you probably still have a lot to learn about SQL optimization (I know, you use an ORM and do not worry about those pesky details:<) I am continuously amazed by the poor quality or performance of a lot of commercial software, probably borne out of hiring practices that espouse the same belief you do.
collyw 10y ago
There is a difference between being able to write code and being able to write nice maintainable code that is easy for others to understand. It took me a lot longer than 4 years to reach the second stage.
minipci1321 10y ago
(Could guess that one will provoke reactions ;-)) My biggest to date (but not the only one): having received complaints, I figured in 2 days that the culprit is the change in the manufacturing-workweek-number of the DDR ICs. It took them several months onsite with people travelling from abroad and with expensive equipment to find the real root cause, and guess what they have found? And I am not even a hardware engineer. How did I do that? Intuition. You need lots of time to develop intuition, much more than 4 years, and once you got it, it saves lots of time and money. I have also seen other experienced engineers do this sort of tricks, and I pity the workplaces where people aren't familiar with this.

micaksica 10y ago

> Yeah, for the vast majority of engineering programming is like selling shoes. You just need about 4 years experience and you pretty much know it all. That's the point I'm trying not to make. Are you building a startup that's effectively a CRUD app? If so, sure, that's pretty much all you need and is why coder schools have become so prevalent - they get you to a practicing point that covers the bases of most small websites and very, very basic startups. Age and experience brings with it something vital: the ability to build long term pattern recognition of technology business cycles, the "all is old is new again", the ways that novel technologies may fall like their predecessors. This is not something you learn in a CS program or even a few years out of college. It's something you only learn by playing with tens of languages and mastering six or seven over decades, by constantly learning, by being part of those business cycles. This skillset is often discredited and is enormously valuable, but I believe it requires a tireless passion for novelty and modern technique to become a multiplier on skill.

AstralStorm 10y ago
Experience is more important if you are actually developing algorithms rather that making another app. It takes time and practice of genius to get a handle on required mathematics for AI, adaptive systems or advanced data structures. It is no accident that mathematicians are divided into super young genius and old bearded wizard camps.
GarvielLoken 10y ago
I disagree with "This is not something you learn in a CS program". Anyone who has taken a SICP course will know "all is old is new again". But in large I agree with you.

tigershark 10y ago

You will never "know it all" about programming. If you seriously think then you can learn all in 4 years I'm really wondering what kind of things are you working on.

collyw 10y ago
Node, Mongo and Angular would be my bet.

throwanem 10y ago

> You just need about 4 years experience and you pretty much know it all. No. After four years you know just about enough to inflict a really nasty case of the second-system effect on some unsuspecting customer.

tbenbrahim 10y ago

I have been programming for 30 years. I can look at code that is 10 years old and see how much I have improved in those 10 years. 26 year old code? It was a joke. I thought I knew it all back then, but for about the last 20 years, I have been working with the realization that I know less than 10% about this field. Your statement cannot be true unless you only work in the very limited scope of CRUD apps. Even then, you probably still have a lot to learn about SQL optimization (I know, you use an ORM and do not worry about those pesky details:<) I am continuously amazed by the poor quality or performance of a lot of commercial software, probably borne out of hiring practices that espouse the same belief you do.

collyw 10y ago

There is a difference between being able to write code and being able to write nice maintainable code that is easy for others to understand. It took me a lot longer than 4 years to reach the second stage.

minipci1321 10y ago

(Could guess that one will provoke reactions ;-)) My biggest to date (but not the only one): having received complaints, I figured in 2 days that the culprit is the change in the manufacturing-workweek-number of the DDR ICs. It took them several months onsite with people travelling from abroad and with expensive equipment to find the real root cause, and guess what they have found? And I am not even a hardware engineer. How did I do that? Intuition. You need lots of time to develop intuition, much more than 4 years, and once you got it, it saves lots of time and money. I have also seen other experienced engineers do this sort of tricks, and I pity the workplaces where people aren't familiar with this.