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I would be very curious to see how many 50 year old engineers are doing web development. I'm only 34 and my experience the past 5 years is that experience is no

I would be very curious to see how many 50 year old engineers are doing web development. I'm only 34 and my experience the past 5 years is that experience is not respected and being out of your 20s makes you a poor culture fit for most web companies. > If you do C#/Java/Go/Rust/C++/C, you're probably not going to be left behind. I wouldn't be so sure. The landscapes don't change as quickly as web dev does, but they do change. I did a bit of Java/Hibernate work 8+ years ago. I look at modern Java code bases now and it's so annotation heavy I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

antonkm 8y ago
I'm mid-thirties and was recently asked to teach a 50 yo best practices for development in Node. And not like Node specific patterns, but more like how to handle http requests. I'm pretty sure that guy is way above my skill set - he's smart and he has 15 years of work experience on me. I turned the offer down since I would have looked like a fool, like a kid teaching an adult how to drive. The age bias is real.
- Pyxl101 8y ago
  It sounds like you missed an opportunity there. Just because someone has XX years of work experience doesn't mean that they know a particular technology stack. Perhaps this could have been a great opportunity for you to teach that person your skillset, while learning things from them in return. The best mentorships are bidirectional. While humans are growing up, we're accustomed to view our "elders" as our superiors in all respects. Childhood teachers encourage this view. However, at the point when you enter the workforce, in my opinion you should set these ideas aside and treat everyone as a peer; and keep your mind open to the idea that both people may have something to learn from the other.
  - antonkm 8y ago
    No, I think I was a bit unclear. The guy obviously knew what he was doing, and had setup projects in Node. For me to come in and tell him how require() works would be insulting. No missed opportunity, I pivoted the deal after turning down the first.
    - dasil003 8y ago
      I don't think you were unclear, I think maybe GP only read the first two sentences.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
kown223 8y ago
but not everything is moving into the could/servers, who does development for desktop nowdays? phoneapps also have same structure as webapps, what other type of dev you mean, industrial?
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  I tell people, look around. Think of every single electricity powered device you interact with or pass by in a day. Someone is doing development work on a lot of those. It's not always flashy work, but it's darn interesting work.
FLUX-YOU 8y ago
If you become comfortable with annotation heavy code bases, what is the likelihood it will change in the future and you have to start over with a new style of codebases? If there's a major shift in those languages (vs. JavaScript) it seems more worth it to retrain once it's solidified and you see companies actually looking for those skills. Fast moving ecosystems means more things become deprecated more quickly and you also risk more "train thing that will be useless next year".

antonkm 8y ago

I'm mid-thirties and was recently asked to teach a 50 yo best practices for development in Node. And not like Node specific patterns, but more like how to handle http requests. I'm pretty sure that guy is way above my skill set - he's smart and he has 15 years of work experience on me. I turned the offer down since I would have looked like a fool, like a kid teaching an adult how to drive. The age bias is real.

Pyxl101 8y ago
It sounds like you missed an opportunity there. Just because someone has XX years of work experience doesn't mean that they know a particular technology stack. Perhaps this could have been a great opportunity for you to teach that person your skillset, while learning things from them in return. The best mentorships are bidirectional. While humans are growing up, we're accustomed to view our "elders" as our superiors in all respects. Childhood teachers encourage this view. However, at the point when you enter the workforce, in my opinion you should set these ideas aside and treat everyone as a peer; and keep your mind open to the idea that both people may have something to learn from the other.
- antonkm 8y ago
  No, I think I was a bit unclear. The guy obviously knew what he was doing, and had setup projects in Node. For me to come in and tell him how require() works would be insulting. No missed opportunity, I pivoted the deal after turning down the first.
  - dasil003 8y ago
    I don't think you were unclear, I think maybe GP only read the first two sentences.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

kown223 8y ago

but not everything is moving into the could/servers, who does development for desktop nowdays? phoneapps also have same structure as webapps, what other type of dev you mean, industrial?

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
I tell people, look around. Think of every single electricity powered device you interact with or pass by in a day. Someone is doing development work on a lot of those. It's not always flashy work, but it's darn interesting work.

FLUX-YOU 8y ago

If you become comfortable with annotation heavy code bases, what is the likelihood it will change in the future and you have to start over with a new style of codebases? If there's a major shift in those languages (vs. JavaScript) it seems more worth it to retrain once it's solidified and you see companies actually looking for those skills. Fast moving ecosystems means more things become deprecated more quickly and you also risk more "train thing that will be useless next year".