5 ms·

> It's not just technology stacks - even the methodologies in this industry seem to undergo radical changes every few years (for better or worse). If this is t

> It's not just technology stacks - even the methodologies in this industry seem to undergo radical changes every few years (for better or worse). If this is the case, then when someone entered the workforce has absolutely no relevance. What is relevant is staying current. It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old. > How confident are we that the web and mobile development that most of HN does today will be big in 2035? I'm not very confident at all. But how do I recognize when to jump ship? Thankfully, these days we have data scientists who examine trends in framework and methodology assimilation for fun and publicity. We have metrics like GitHub stars, Stackoverflow questions, and Google Trends to clue us in on the popularity and profitability of new ways of doing things.

DougN7 10y ago
> It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old. I don't know if I agree with that. When I was 25, I was all over every new technology that came out. I was the expert in my group. I'm now pushing 50. The latest tech isn't nearly as interesting. And honestly, I'm getting tired of chasing it. My energy level has dropped a bit. Physically I'm not in as good a shape (though still quite healthy). The effects of age are very real.
- hnal943 10y ago
  You're right, and it's not just the affects of age. As I have gotten older, my responsibilities have become more diverse - Outside of work, I am a husband, parent, and bible study teacher. Much of the time I used to spend playing with new technology are now spent in those roles. You also mentioned getting tired of the chase. It's hard not to get jaded about the newest javascript framework (for example) when we have been reinventing these wheels in our industry since the 50's. Whenever the next big thing pops up, it will arise out of the oeuvre of a lot of stuff that - taken individually - are a dead ends.
- beat 10y ago
  Another way to put it is that the 25 year old thinks all the shiny new technologies are important. The 50 year old knows better. I'm 51. Many, maybe most of the tech that's fundamental to my career didn't even exist when my career started. Only Unix and SQL have been constants. http was a lab experiment. The Mosaic browser didn't exist yet. Java? Ruby? NoSQL? Whatever. If you need to learn a tech to solve a problem, you learn a tech. It's not hard. What I find interesting isn't new technologies. It's new problems, problems that didn't exist before (often because they're the result of new tech), or problems that could not be addressed before (due to limits of computational power or data access).
- rhizome 10y ago
  I'm your age, and I think a good example of what you're talking about is javascript frameworks. Younger programmers might dissect each one and suss out the details like any of us might have done with CONFIG.SYS, but as an older programmer they all seem essentially similar and as far as professional skills go I can probably either just choose one or wait until the dominant one shakes out. This of course is aided by my sense/prediction/bigotry that JS frameworks are following Hotelling's Law.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    You're mostly right, but that means you're missing an extremely important piece of the picture. Both the browser and Node provide hardly any structure at all compared to Cocoa, WinForms, or even the Java standard library. Experienced developers recoil because it feels like building a house with hand tools, compared to having a team of contractors at your disposal. This results in JavaScript developers building their own tools. That's why there are so many of them. In iOS no one writes a GUI toolkit, because Apple already provided one and it's pretty good. People have their complaints but they're rarely serious enough to warrant throwing the whole stack away. In that sense these more robust platforms are superior. But the JavaScript world is like a giant evolutionary system trying all ideas at once, at almost every level of the stack. Lots of repetition, lots of death, but also WAY more ideas floating around. JavaScript frameworks all look the same to outsiders because they mostly are. But they are different in subtle ways that you simply can't explore on iOS because Apple already decided where the major architectural boundaries will be. There are painful tradeoffs on the JavaScript side, but I think in the long run the fundamental advantages will become enormous. I believe the web a disruptive (to native) technology in the Innovators Dilemma sense, but we're still very early on the adoption curve. Only a fraction of a percent of people use the web's most powerful feature, which is JavaScript functions.
    - yakshaving_jgt 10y ago
      > Only a fraction of a percent of people use the web's most powerful feature, which is JavaScript functions. …What!?
- flukus 10y ago
  At 25 everything seems new and exiciting, now in my mid 30's I'm starting to see new tech as just a new spin on old ideas. If you were familiar with smalltalk for instance, you probably wouldn't have found java or .net particularly exciting, you probably wouldn't have as hard a time picking it up either.
- error415 10y ago
  I think every 50 year old is different. A fifty year old who did some regular exercise, is different than a guy who spent the last thirty years sitting at a desk? When I was younger, I thought most people over 30 were basically worthless. As I've aged, I changed that up a bit. Young and old have their place. When I was in my twenties, and thirties; you couldn't pay me to sit in front of a computer--literally. What was I interested in? Guess? Girls! And then Girls! And then anything other than sitting at a desk all day, especially looking into a screen. Was I entitled? A bit? Only as I aged, did computer science become palatable. Do I love it? No, but I haven't loved anything besides a few family members, and my pets. I think where Hiring Managers get it wrong is assuming all young people will be Rock Stars, with great ideas. They will be happy with free food, and lofty promises. I never bought it. I took what I wanted. I smiled, looked promising, but hated my employers. I would not want to hire myself after college. I finished college ready for med school, and looked back, and could count on my hands what courses weren't a waste of time. I was dissalusioned. I do think the best ideas still come from mainly young people, but separating the the best from the herd is impossible. Peter Thiel has the money to throw at young people, and wait for the shooting star. He knows that combination of being young, hormones at full throttle, and angst; might just produce another Mark Zuckerburg. (I used Mark, but he might have just stole an idea, and got very lucky? I honestly haven't figured it out.) And to be perfectly honest; the young guys, I know, who became rich--all had wealthy enabling fathers. The more I think about it, it was their fathers(50 plus) who provided the idea, and capital, but weren't willing to give up their day gig to see their product through. The ageism won't go away soon. I think it will take another five to ten years for the industry to realize you don't need to fire programmer at 40, but who knows? I personally think in a decade, this profession will be talked about in the past tense. Yes, a few will always have a secure job, but most jobs will be contracted out to the lowest bidder. Hell, I don't think it will be ten years. Once "Let it go whatever", rehashedidea.com, etc. run out of free money; we will have a huge group of dissalusioned 25-35 year olds. Many will be homeless? Many talking about the good ole days when companies treated you like you were a valuable commodity. "Rember the free stuff?"
  - gedy 10y ago
    Your writing style is really enjoyable to read.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  > And honestly, I'm getting tired of chasing it. My energy level has dropped a bit. Physically I'm not in as good a shape (though still quite healthy). The effects of age are very real. But that's also experience. There is a sameness both the 'new thing' cycle and the new things themselves that largely becomes apparent as we accumulate experience -- which happens to coincide with years, but I don't think it's the years that are the cause.) From that perspective it seems logical to be less interested in chasing all the new things. So far I've found (~10 yr. younger than you) that if something comes along that is sufficiently interesting, I dive into it just as deeply as ever -- but I'm a fair bit more discerning about what I find sufficiently interesting.
- ant6n 10y ago
  Even at 25 I wasn't interested in the new tech. Uh oh. Oh well. Anybody up for some hacking around with bits?
saghm 10y ago
> If this is the case, then when someone entered the workforce has absolutely no relevance. What is relevant is staying current. It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old. I might be wrong, but I got the sense that the comment you're responding to is trying to make the exact same point. It even says that one point that the uncle's age was completely irrelevant to his not learning the newer technologies.

DougN7 10y ago

> It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old. I don't know if I agree with that. When I was 25, I was all over every new technology that came out. I was the expert in my group. I'm now pushing 50. The latest tech isn't nearly as interesting. And honestly, I'm getting tired of chasing it. My energy level has dropped a bit. Physically I'm not in as good a shape (though still quite healthy). The effects of age are very real.

hnal943 10y ago
You're right, and it's not just the affects of age. As I have gotten older, my responsibilities have become more diverse - Outside of work, I am a husband, parent, and bible study teacher. Much of the time I used to spend playing with new technology are now spent in those roles. You also mentioned getting tired of the chase. It's hard not to get jaded about the newest javascript framework (for example) when we have been reinventing these wheels in our industry since the 50's. Whenever the next big thing pops up, it will arise out of the oeuvre of a lot of stuff that - taken individually - are a dead ends.
beat 10y ago
Another way to put it is that the 25 year old thinks all the shiny new technologies are important. The 50 year old knows better. I'm 51. Many, maybe most of the tech that's fundamental to my career didn't even exist when my career started. Only Unix and SQL have been constants. http was a lab experiment. The Mosaic browser didn't exist yet. Java? Ruby? NoSQL? Whatever. If you need to learn a tech to solve a problem, you learn a tech. It's not hard. What I find interesting isn't new technologies. It's new problems, problems that didn't exist before (often because they're the result of new tech), or problems that could not be addressed before (due to limits of computational power or data access).
rhizome 10y ago
I'm your age, and I think a good example of what you're talking about is javascript frameworks. Younger programmers might dissect each one and suss out the details like any of us might have done with CONFIG.SYS, but as an older programmer they all seem essentially similar and as far as professional skills go I can probably either just choose one or wait until the dominant one shakes out. This of course is aided by my sense/prediction/bigotry that JS frameworks are following Hotelling's Law.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  You're mostly right, but that means you're missing an extremely important piece of the picture. Both the browser and Node provide hardly any structure at all compared to Cocoa, WinForms, or even the Java standard library. Experienced developers recoil because it feels like building a house with hand tools, compared to having a team of contractors at your disposal. This results in JavaScript developers building their own tools. That's why there are so many of them. In iOS no one writes a GUI toolkit, because Apple already provided one and it's pretty good. People have their complaints but they're rarely serious enough to warrant throwing the whole stack away. In that sense these more robust platforms are superior. But the JavaScript world is like a giant evolutionary system trying all ideas at once, at almost every level of the stack. Lots of repetition, lots of death, but also WAY more ideas floating around. JavaScript frameworks all look the same to outsiders because they mostly are. But they are different in subtle ways that you simply can't explore on iOS because Apple already decided where the major architectural boundaries will be. There are painful tradeoffs on the JavaScript side, but I think in the long run the fundamental advantages will become enormous. I believe the web a disruptive (to native) technology in the Innovators Dilemma sense, but we're still very early on the adoption curve. Only a fraction of a percent of people use the web's most powerful feature, which is JavaScript functions.
  - yakshaving_jgt 10y ago
    > Only a fraction of a percent of people use the web's most powerful feature, which is JavaScript functions. …What!?
flukus 10y ago
At 25 everything seems new and exiciting, now in my mid 30's I'm starting to see new tech as just a new spin on old ideas. If you were familiar with smalltalk for instance, you probably wouldn't have found java or .net particularly exciting, you probably wouldn't have as hard a time picking it up either.
error415 10y ago
I think every 50 year old is different. A fifty year old who did some regular exercise, is different than a guy who spent the last thirty years sitting at a desk? When I was younger, I thought most people over 30 were basically worthless. As I've aged, I changed that up a bit. Young and old have their place. When I was in my twenties, and thirties; you couldn't pay me to sit in front of a computer--literally. What was I interested in? Guess? Girls! And then Girls! And then anything other than sitting at a desk all day, especially looking into a screen. Was I entitled? A bit? Only as I aged, did computer science become palatable. Do I love it? No, but I haven't loved anything besides a few family members, and my pets. I think where Hiring Managers get it wrong is assuming all young people will be Rock Stars, with great ideas. They will be happy with free food, and lofty promises. I never bought it. I took what I wanted. I smiled, looked promising, but hated my employers. I would not want to hire myself after college. I finished college ready for med school, and looked back, and could count on my hands what courses weren't a waste of time. I was dissalusioned. I do think the best ideas still come from mainly young people, but separating the the best from the herd is impossible. Peter Thiel has the money to throw at young people, and wait for the shooting star. He knows that combination of being young, hormones at full throttle, and angst; might just produce another Mark Zuckerburg. (I used Mark, but he might have just stole an idea, and got very lucky? I honestly haven't figured it out.) And to be perfectly honest; the young guys, I know, who became rich--all had wealthy enabling fathers. The more I think about it, it was their fathers(50 plus) who provided the idea, and capital, but weren't willing to give up their day gig to see their product through. The ageism won't go away soon. I think it will take another five to ten years for the industry to realize you don't need to fire programmer at 40, but who knows? I personally think in a decade, this profession will be talked about in the past tense. Yes, a few will always have a secure job, but most jobs will be contracted out to the lowest bidder. Hell, I don't think it will be ten years. Once "Let it go whatever", rehashedidea.com, etc. run out of free money; we will have a huge group of dissalusioned 25-35 year olds. Many will be homeless? Many talking about the good ole days when companies treated you like you were a valuable commodity. "Rember the free stuff?"
- gedy 10y ago
  Your writing style is really enjoyable to read.
GrinningFool 10y ago
> And honestly, I'm getting tired of chasing it. My energy level has dropped a bit. Physically I'm not in as good a shape (though still quite healthy). The effects of age are very real. But that's also experience. There is a sameness both the 'new thing' cycle and the new things themselves that largely becomes apparent as we accumulate experience -- which happens to coincide with years, but I don't think it's the years that are the cause.) From that perspective it seems logical to be less interested in chasing all the new things. So far I've found (~10 yr. younger than you) that if something comes along that is sufficiently interesting, I dive into it just as deeply as ever -- but I'm a fair bit more discerning about what I find sufficiently interesting.
ant6n 10y ago
Even at 25 I wasn't interested in the new tech. Uh oh. Oh well. Anybody up for some hacking around with bits?

saghm 10y ago

> If this is the case, then when someone entered the workforce has absolutely no relevance. What is relevant is staying current. It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old. I might be wrong, but I got the sense that the comment you're responding to is trying to make the exact same point. It even says that one point that the uncle's age was completely irrelevant to his not learning the newer technologies.