3 ms·

Indian army man learns to code at age of 65 and now have 110 customers

23 points by prasad_lingawar 9y ago

unixhero 9y ago
Good to know there's still hope :)
hackermailman 9y ago
Forced sign up to Linkedin to read article. Use archive.is
- prasad_lingawar 9y ago
  Hey sorry, did not know about this. I will keep this in mind for future posts.
ramshanker 9y ago
Once a primary school teacher of mine said, "If you are excellent in one language, you will be good in any other". And being an Army guy already imparts a plenty of good qualities / habit. No matter they can learn anything they wish to.
Diederich 9y ago
In 2000, I taught an unaccredited programming course at my local community college. It was once a week for four hours on Saturdays. The language, Perl, was an elective. The choice of language and scheduling guaranteed a rather diverse group of students. One fellow in his late 40s was a security guard at the college, and so classes were inexpensive for him. He was particularly drawn to my class because there were a number of Perl related jobs in the area at the time. During my office hour after the class, we sometime chatted and I discovered that he had been working at a local manufacturing facility for almost 20 years. That facility had shut down some years earlier and all of the jobs moved overseas. (1) He was a pretty bright guy, and though he had almost no technical background before he started taking classes a year earlier, he was passing my class. I asked him about his hundred of ex-coworkers that had also been laid off. Few if any were making as much progress as he was toward building a new career from scratch in the second half of their lives. Some people can learn radically different, technical skills later in life. I'm now in the second half of my life and I'm learning new things every week, though I've been deep in technology since I was 10 years old. A better question is this: of the hundreds of people laid off from that factory, and the thousands laid off in that particular region, how many would be able to find tech jobs if even half managed to get the proper training? 1) The building lay idle for a couple of years, and then was bought by a large multinational company based in the area, and turned into its primary Information Systems location. https://www.google.com/maps/place/David+Glass+Technology+Center,+Bentonville,+AR+72712 https://www.google.com/maps/place/David+Glass+Technology+Cen... That's where 90% of the tech jobs in the area were, so over the next 9 years I would occasionally look up his name to see if he'd hired on. Once he finished his training I was going to surprise him at his desk! Alas, his name never came up. Not surprising in retrospect, since most of our positions wanted some experience.
- cholantesh 9y ago
  >One fellow in his late 40s was a security guard at the college, and so classes were inexpensive for him. He was particularly drawn to my class because there were a number of Perl related jobs in the area at the time. >During my office hour after the class, we sometime chatted and I discovered that he had been working at a local manufacturing facility for almost 20 years. That facility had shut down some years earlier and all of the jobs moved overseas. There is a concierge in my building who was the lead engineer in a textile factory for about 20 years back in Poland. When he immigrated to Canada, he was unable to transfer credentials and had to take the concierge job to make ends meet. He once said to me, "This job has turned out to be a lot less temporary than I hoped." He was only half-joking. Seems like I meet a lot of middle-to-senior aged people in security in the same boat as him, which I find both fascinating and distressing.
Pica_soO 9y ago
My dad is a farmer, and he spends most his remaining years in front of a TV. How i wished i could teach him coding.. his body is almost done for when it comes to movement- but coding, that could be possible. The problem is not the teaching- i could do that- its bringing someone back from a defeatist mindset. Whatever I do - the bank & robbers always win. How do you get that out of someones head?
happy-go-lucky 9y ago
> Yesterday I met this amazing guy Kuldeep Sahni, he is a retired lieutenant colonel of Indian Army. At the age of 65, he started learning to code. In less than 6 months he built his hospital management system especially for Army hospitals from scratch. Now his hospital management system is used by more than 125 hospitals across India. He is 68 now and still has the passion for learning. No wonder, age is just a number. He is such an inspiration to young generation and entrepreneurs. A big salute to this man. > He is looking for .NET freelancers to scale his initiative, if anyone in my network is interested please let me know. For those who have no LinkedIn account, that's all of the article. I googled for the army man, found no relevant info. With so many customers, they must have a website. Seems to be a click bait :)
- prasad_lingawar 9y ago
  Hey, He is not on LinkedIn. He has only Army hospitals as customers and he has a standalone application/Software. All the customers he got were from word of mouth and personal connections so did not bother to create the website. Plus he is not doing that for money.

unixhero 9y ago

Good to know there's still hope :)

hackermailman 9y ago

Forced sign up to Linkedin to read article. Use archive.is

prasad_lingawar 9y ago
Hey sorry, did not know about this. I will keep this in mind for future posts.

ramshanker 9y ago

Once a primary school teacher of mine said, "If you are excellent in one language, you will be good in any other". And being an Army guy already imparts a plenty of good qualities / habit. No matter they can learn anything they wish to.

Diederich 9y ago

In 2000, I taught an unaccredited programming course at my local community college. It was once a week for four hours on Saturdays. The language, Perl, was an elective. The choice of language and scheduling guaranteed a rather diverse group of students. One fellow in his late 40s was a security guard at the college, and so classes were inexpensive for him. He was particularly drawn to my class because there were a number of Perl related jobs in the area at the time. During my office hour after the class, we sometime chatted and I discovered that he had been working at a local manufacturing facility for almost 20 years. That facility had shut down some years earlier and all of the jobs moved overseas. (1) He was a pretty bright guy, and though he had almost no technical background before he started taking classes a year earlier, he was passing my class. I asked him about his hundred of ex-coworkers that had also been laid off. Few if any were making as much progress as he was toward building a new career from scratch in the second half of their lives. Some people can learn radically different, technical skills later in life. I'm now in the second half of my life and I'm learning new things every week, though I've been deep in technology since I was 10 years old. A better question is this: of the hundreds of people laid off from that factory, and the thousands laid off in that particular region, how many would be able to find tech jobs if even half managed to get the proper training? 1) The building lay idle for a couple of years, and then was bought by a large multinational company based in the area, and turned into its primary Information Systems location. https://www.google.com/maps/place/David+Glass+Technology+Center,+Bentonville,+AR+72712 https://www.google.com/maps/place/David+Glass+Technology+Cen... That's where 90% of the tech jobs in the area were, so over the next 9 years I would occasionally look up his name to see if he'd hired on. Once he finished his training I was going to surprise him at his desk! Alas, his name never came up. Not surprising in retrospect, since most of our positions wanted some experience.

cholantesh 9y ago
>One fellow in his late 40s was a security guard at the college, and so classes were inexpensive for him. He was particularly drawn to my class because there were a number of Perl related jobs in the area at the time. >During my office hour after the class, we sometime chatted and I discovered that he had been working at a local manufacturing facility for almost 20 years. That facility had shut down some years earlier and all of the jobs moved overseas. There is a concierge in my building who was the lead engineer in a textile factory for about 20 years back in Poland. When he immigrated to Canada, he was unable to transfer credentials and had to take the concierge job to make ends meet. He once said to me, "This job has turned out to be a lot less temporary than I hoped." He was only half-joking. Seems like I meet a lot of middle-to-senior aged people in security in the same boat as him, which I find both fascinating and distressing.

Pica_soO 9y ago

My dad is a farmer, and he spends most his remaining years in front of a TV. How i wished i could teach him coding.. his body is almost done for when it comes to movement- but coding, that could be possible. The problem is not the teaching- i could do that- its bringing someone back from a defeatist mindset. Whatever I do - the bank & robbers always win. How do you get that out of someones head?

happy-go-lucky 9y ago

> Yesterday I met this amazing guy Kuldeep Sahni, he is a retired lieutenant colonel of Indian Army. At the age of 65, he started learning to code. In less than 6 months he built his hospital management system especially for Army hospitals from scratch. Now his hospital management system is used by more than 125 hospitals across India. He is 68 now and still has the passion for learning. No wonder, age is just a number. He is such an inspiration to young generation and entrepreneurs. A big salute to this man. > He is looking for .NET freelancers to scale his initiative, if anyone in my network is interested please let me know. For those who have no LinkedIn account, that's all of the article. I googled for the army man, found no relevant info. With so many customers, they must have a website. Seems to be a click bait :)

prasad_lingawar 9y ago
Hey, He is not on LinkedIn. He has only Army hospitals as customers and he has a standalone application/Software. All the customers he got were from word of mouth and personal connections so did not bother to create the website. Plus he is not doing that for money.