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82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding
- innocentoldguy 8y agoI know Masako and I think what she has accomplished is pretty remarkable. Her story goes to show that people can accomplish anything they want, regardless of age, if they take joy from it.
- hapnin 8y agoI'm 60 years old. I'm teaching myself node.js and related tools. I find great joy in learning anyway but networked computers are still as amazing to me now as they were when I first encountered them in the 70s. If you ever speak to Masako, please tell her she inspired an old geek in America.
- innocentoldguy 8y agoI will.
- shredprez 8y agoQuite a feat! I think her success as a marketer shouldn't be overlooked: many of the app store reviews focus mainly on her unique backstory (plenty of them posted before this article was even published). Very nicely done.
- bazooka_penguin 8y agoI wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found more success than I have...
- trav4225 8y ago> I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude I wonder that too and do believe that it is largely about attitude. Part of it, however, is also wisdom. For example, as adults, experience has brought us to the point of realizing that a lot of what drives younger people is just buzz and bullshit. 99.9% of the things everyone claims are "THE NEXT BIG THING YOU MUST NOT MISS OUT ON!" end up being of no practical consequence whatsoever to life or society.
- hinkley 8y agoI think you have to find a kind of patience. Going through your life psyching yourself up about how amazing and life changing this new experience is going to be doesn’t last. For most people the mid life crisis is the last time they try that. All of the new stuff I’ve started has been on the cautiously optimistic end of the scale. This could be the best thing ever but it’ll take a long time for it to be so. Just show up until then.
- anothergoogler 8y agoIs brain elasticity an objectively scientific thing? Can it be measured? It seems like an invention to fit observed mental rigidness with age.
- padthai 8y agoYes, it is. In mice we even know some enzymes responsible for this: https://futurism.com/fountain-youth-effect-young-blood-old-mice/ https://futurism.com/fountain-youth-effect-young-blood-old-m...
- shakna 8y agoNeuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to transfer neurons across areas of grey matter. Essentially moving function. It is observed in adults as well as children, but there is definite decay in that ability. By 'observed', neuroplasticity has been observed at the microscopic level, as well as higher levels, such as brain remapping of function following injury.
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- epx 8y agoMade my day! Thanks for this.
- padthai 8y agoWhat does it mean "oriented to old people"? Old people can play anything, they just have slower reflexes. Silver Snipers are 60-80 years old and play Counter Strike: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800924/silver-snipers-senior-counter-strike-team https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800924/silver-snipers-...
- matte_black 8y agoWhen I was a teenager playing Starcraft, I learned that one of the guys who regularly played with us was in his 50s. At the time it seemed weird anyone that old would be able to keep up in this game, or even know what it's about.
- sweetbacon 8y agoI find lots of players in Overwatch are surprised to find I'm 46 with an above average SR whenever it comes up. Though I typically don't snipe, I seem to still have some twitch reflexes left!
- vanderZwan 8y agoArguably there might be culturally/socially more appealing topics and associated gameplay for different generations.
- wodenokoto 8y agoOne of the things she mentions in the interview with Tim Cook, at the bottom of the article, is that many old people have trouble swiping on their phone, so she wanted the game to be playable through only tapping the phone.
- brianpan 8y agoIt means there's nothing about being woke, backpack kid, or Nirvana. The games do feature songs from Barbra Streisand, mornings walks, and coffee from McDonalds.
- corpMaverick 8y agoI feel it is kind of sad to see old people in the casinos. They are mindless spending time. They don't even seem to enjoy it. There must be games that are more enjoyable than that. no skill needed, no creativity being developed.
- paulpauper 8y agosome casino games req. skill
- colordrops 8y agoSure, but most of them are on slots.
- mynd 8y agoMany recreational poker players I encounter are well over 50, and more than competent at the game.
- crooked-v 8y agoI think the parent comment was talking about video poker and slots, rather than the games without literally hardcoded success rates.
- gaius 8y agoThey are mindless spending time. You pull down, something spins, sometimes you get a reward. Slot machine or Facebook app?
- zzzeek 8y agoI actually stepped foot into a depressing casino some years ago and actually saw slot machines, and was amazed that would appeal to anyone. they're full blown video games but only have one button. super boring! and dumb - hey here's our hotel and restaurant, but to pay for your stay, instead of paying at the desk, you have to spend your whole vacation in a dark smoky room buying tokens to feed into a machine and pushing a button for days on end. sign me up. I predict that current generations who have grown up with technology and video games are going to be much less interested in really dumb machines like this. But this is total armchair conjecture and I'm probably totally wrong.
- paulpauper 8y agoI still find it hard to get a php ajax form to work despite tinkering with code for over 10 years. I can;t imagine trying to code an entire app when getting a form to work takes hours. guess some people learn faster than others
- jgtrosh 8y agoMaybe PHP AJAX forms take a lifetime to master, compared with what people learn nowadays.
- noir_lord 8y agoThings are a lot less painful than they used to be. fetch()/promises/async/await and better browser support. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FormData https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FormData https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API Also promises (coupled with async/await) make things a great deal more pleasant and I'm old enough to remember the old days.
- ben_jones 8y agoHow does javascript async/await solve form handling (presumably pure html) and basic PHP?
- noir_lord 8y agoHe said ajax, the asynchronous part can be handled cleanly with async/await particularly if doing more complex field validation/rules.
- onion2k 8y agoJS syntax is a lot nicer these days but that's always been relatively easy. Where web dev is hard, and will always remain hard, is the concept of writing stateless applications. Building something that might seem easy to you, such as a form with server-side validation, is very different to building a desktop app. When you write desktop apps you don't rebuild the entire UI for every update. You don't have to reload the user's entire state on every call. Those things are weird if you're not used to it. It's perfectly reasonable for a developer to say they find it hard. And, arguably, it could be part of the reason why frameworks like React are so popular - they make writing for the web a little more like writing a desktop app, because components can have persistent state.
- combatentropy 8y agoA point of clarification: "She's been dabbling in the tech field since the age of 60." Still impressive though! Also, the app isn't described until 3/4 into the article: "The app, based on the annual Japanese doll festival of Hina Matsuri, invites players to arrange 12 ornamental dolls --- representing the country's emperor, family and guests --- in a specific order."
- cpeterso 8y ago> Wakamiya bought her first computer, then moved on to a Microsoft PC, and later a Mac and iPhones. So what was her first computer?? :) The article says she bought her first computer after retiring from a 43-year career, which would be around 1997 (year 2018 - age 82 + 18 years + 43 years).
- gaius 8y agoSo what was her first computer?? Probably a super-cool Japanese machine that never made it to the West like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS
- tw1010 8y agoI always found it funny, the idea that age or agism should in any way stop you from achieving cool shit in business. Entrepreneurship is a jungle. Your customers, largely speaking, doesn't know your age or gender or whether or not you went to an ivy league school or anything else. Some career directions certainly do depend on that stuff, but that's mostly because they depend on other people for advancement. But building products is only a competition against forces that pull down quality, not a game of gatekeeper-signaling. If you want to succeed in business, you can either let that stuff affect you, or you can just build something that people buy and prove everyone who says there are fundamental barriers wrong.
- frockington 8y agoI found this oddly inspiring and zen. Made me want to break out and try something new
- gowld 8y agoWhat are some examples of successful businesses that launched and operate without person-to-person contact and negotiations? Purely automated online operations conceal identities, sure, but investors usually know who the entrepreneurs, and major clients and vendors and joint-venture partners do too.
- jdietrich 8y agoLots of SaaS companies were entirely bootstrapped and rely primarily or wholly on low-touch B2C or B2SME sales - most of the speakers and attendees at MicroConf would fall into this camp.
- dronescanfly 8y agoFunny how a lot of people assume that companies can only ever work with investor money...
- jrs95 8y agoIf only Rework was required reading... I honestly think you could make an entire college course just based on the stuff that the Basecamp guys have put out there. I don't necessarily agree with their perspective 100%, but it's valuable to consider vastly different viewpoints.
- brightball 8y agoThere’s a 78 year old man enrolled in Computer Information Systems at Clemson right now. Great story and amazing life too. https://newsstand.clemson.edu/78-year-old-sophomore-everything-ive-done-in-life-ive-done-late/ https://newsstand.clemson.edu/78-year-old-sophomore-everythi...
- zpatel 8y agoI made an app for 2 older folks (~75) who connected with me over the web. The high level idea and functional spec was provided by them. One of the main reason i helped them was because it was interesting to see someone at their age trying to change the world (a bit) positively through the use of software..
- joering2 8y agoshare the app!!
- joering2 8y agoSince I posted it I feel compelled to add: its irrelevant that this person was a woman of Japanese decent. We all know gender and nationality is irrelevant when it comes to skill of coding, but I wanted to keep it intact in the title as the article goes. As of her age, I do think its quite unique skills to be so laser-focused at something as tedious as coding, even more in CamelType structured language as Apple forces on you. I only code for last 30 years but I do hope to have such clarity of my mind when I reach her age, hopefully :)
- gowld 8y agoShe's a Japanese person making a Japanese app about a Japanese cultural topic.
- droidist2 8y agoVery inspiring, this is her website: http://marchan.travel.coocan.jp http://marchan.travel.coocan.jp Also previous discussion and video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14995333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14995333
- Something1234 8y agoKind of off topic, but I've always found Japanese domain names to weird. They always seem to be subdomains of someone else's site. Why is this?
- oceanman888 8y agoShe is probably using some hosting service provided by Japaneses company. edit: the company hp is cocan.jp a lot of personal home page are host by them. since normal Japanese don't exactly know how to use heroku and AWS.
- pimlottc 8y agoIn case you're not aware, you're being downvoted for "Jap". Perhaps you were just abbreviating "Japanese", but it's considered offensive.
- oceanman888 8y agoThat is good to know, I am not from the states. I thought Jap was abbreviate for Japanese what have the internet done to me lol.
- astura 8y ago"Jap" only became an ethnic slur in American English during/due to World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jap
- deleted 8y ago
- mistrial9 8y agotwice I have worked with colleagues in Japan on non-trivial things.. patience, skill and conflict-averse were my direct experience.. regarding the age topic.. it is rampant in the Bay Area, and in my opinion is a flimsy mask over an even greater list of ugly management practices
- sharecropper 8y agoAnother great example where an open mind of any age will learn new things. My neighbour is in her 90's always seems to relish the challenge of learning new things, and it does seem to keep her brain sharp.
- doomlaser 8y agoThis reminds me of the story about the 81 year old woman who uses an Amiga, AmigaBASIC and C to create programmatic visual art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDfIkXf3uzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDfIkXf3uzA
- Cleanairforall 8y agowhoah!! 82 years old is still coding? that's very impressive
- sytelus 8y agoIf I understand correctly, she started out with Swift as her first language? Wakamiya soon bought programming books and learned Apple’s Swift programming language through lessons with a programmer, nearly 200 miles away from her home in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, via Facebook Messenger and Skype.
- ozaark 8y agoLooks like she has been interested for many years "This wasn’t the first time that Wakamiya took on a challenge. She’s been dabbling in the tech field since the age of 60."
- disordinary 8y agoThere's been quite a few studies that learning things like new languages forges new neuron pathways and helps fight off dementia and other age related brain diseases. I wonder if there's been any studies to the cognitive benefits of teaching the elderly to code?
- gerdesj 8y agoThere are a lot of threads here comparing learning a "foreign" language with learning a computer "language". C is C and English is odd.
- intrasight 8y agoVery inspiring. Made me happy - to know that after programming for 28 years, I might only be half-way through my career.
- kazinator 8y agoI saw another such woman on (Japanese) TV some time ago, also octagenarian, I think. She made a virtual koto. You know, pluck the strings on the mobile device's screen, and koto tones come out. Maybe it's the same person.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoThere's a video at the end of the article where Tim Cook is discussing with Masako Wakamiya, Tim asks specific questions on accessibility & she enthusiastically answers all of them precisely.She definitely knows what she's doing. I wish, Tim asked her what difficulty she faced while porting to iPad as she said so. Nevertheless, the video made me happy.
- gymshoes 8y agoThis is awesome.
- agumonkey 8y agoNot really up to that level, but a 96yo neighbor rang on my bell for some tech support. The dude was sharper than a lot of 50yo persons. Humans are weird
- olingern 8y agoI just moved to Japan, and it's fascinating that connotations (including my previous) with Japan are "High tech, futuristic, efficient" when in reality it is, "slow moving, traditional, and (frequently) inefficient." I can comment more as to why / how. This woman is not only fighting cultural norms of the _world_, but also Japan. Software engineering, in general, lags so far behind the rest of the world, save robotics. It's starting to change, and I'm glad that people like Wakamiya-san are preventing the creation of a 'conventional software engineer'. Seriously, the field needs more role models like Grace Hopper to idolize rather than our current trend of Jobs, Gates, Woz, Knuth, etc.
- huseyinkeles 8y ago>> I can comment more as to why / how. please, I'd like to hear your observations.
- olingern 8y agoI'm from the south in the US, specifically the Appalachia (`app-uh-lai-chuh` for us) region. The culture I grew up in and Japan aren't so dissimilar. That's partly why I live in Japan. Aside from people being on time and getting food to you -- "things" (for lack of better term) move slow here. Some examples: - It took me three weeks to get a debit card from one of the national banks here. They have a web login and send me an email every time I swipe my card; however, there's no way to check my balance online. - At restaurants / coffee shops you'll stand in line for an exceptional amount of time. In NYC, if a line gets "out of hand" baristas / servers shorten the amount of attention they give to each customer. It's expected when you get to the counter, you know what you want. Not in Japan (or at least all the places I've visited). Many times people will get to the counter, after standing in line, and debate with their friends what to purchase. It's always great that you know the person behind the counter is giving you their full attention, but it's frustrating when you're behind 2 - 3 people who are taking their time with their purchase. It's especially ironic in a culture that is fixated on not inconveniencing others. - Swiping a credit card is weirdly complicated. In most places in the USA / the rest of the world -- it's a 'swipe and go' sort of deal. In Japan many systems are geared more toward physical money and transit cards (Passmo / Suica). In many cases, using your bank card requires closing the transaction on the register, printing a receipt, keying this in on another machine, waiting, and signing (in some cases). The efficiency that transactions happen with in the USA is definitely something I took for granted. - In terms of it being traditional here, I liken current Japanese culture to the US in the 1930s - 40s. A majority of people who work in Tokyo will be in suits (sometimes known as 'salary men' depending on their position), and the gestures of bowing and greeting are much like America's pre-WWII culture of tipping hats / more formal language. I've always been fascinated with more humble, traditional culture(s). I think it attributes to better humans. Though it seems like I'm giving Japan a hard time in some ways -- it's just "different," but I wanted to highlight some of the ways that (as a foreigner) your predispositions affect your expectations of a culture. I largely attribute my own to media coverage of Japan in the U.S. Tangent to all of this. One of my favorite things that was unexpected, but obvious once I knew about it was the Japanese concept of "monozukuri"[1]. Many things are so well crafted here, because of a cultural emphasis on producing things with quality. I also think this is a part of why things move slow here. Americans are so focused on immediacy that there's a line of books exploiting that, Sam's "Learn X in 24HRs." I respect Japan for not being the "face paced" culture SF / NYC have turned into. Tokyo feels so tame in comparison, and (for me at least) that's a good thing. 1 - http://www.japanintercultural.com/en/news/default.aspx?newsid=88 http://www.japanintercultural.com/en/news/default.aspx?newsi...
- Double_a_92 8y agoI like how the design of her personal page look so outdated but still very very neat.
- csomar 8y agoMost of the people over 70s I knew have had their sight degraded or lost pretty much all of it. Her eyes (from the picture) look in a pretty healthy condition. I mean degraded in a bad way that they can't read normal text and require assistance. I think they'll have trouble reading code on a normal computer screen. What your experiences in your surrounding are? I don't really hang with older people when I travel so mine is limited to my family. I'm wondering if it is a genetic thing. Given that I'm planning to retire by my very early 30s, and guessing an average age of 75-80. I still have around 40 years. Plenty of time and I like computers.
- sah2ed 8y ago> I still have around 40 years. Plenty of time and I like computers. That's what we all wish for -- a long healthy mostly uneventful life -- until reality strikes, hard.
- skriticos2 8y agoDepends a lot on the lifestyle. A few of my relatives managed to stay relatively fit over 70 with a relatively active lifestyle and probably some luck in the genetic makeup (they do need vision aids, but can manage fairly OK with them). I'm from Europe, but I heard that Japanese have a comparably high life expectancy, which likely results in better overall health in all age groups. I'm sitting in front of a computer all day, so my chances are probably not as good in this regard if I don't change things. But I guess this kind of insight is news for few people around here.
- Cafeaua 8y agoelder scrolls
- Cafeaua 8y agoElder scrolls
- ommunist 8y agoNot many of you looked what exactly that Hinadan game is. It is all about Japanese rituals and conservative tradition and history. What is fascinating, is that Wakamiya-san exhibits the great value of accumulated experience, by making Hinadan game. This value is almost completely neglected in the modern Western society with its cults of the "new shiny thing" and "the next big thing".