10 ms·

You're never too old to learn to code

92 points by devhero 8y ago

kerng 8y ago
>> In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" even though the only age requirements at the event were that the participants be 18+. Wow. Would be great to hear further details around what happened there.
- devhero 8y ago
  We won the hackathon after talking to the judges
  - welly 8y ago
    Too old to compete? How the hell did they justify that one? Because you were too old, you'd have an unfair advantage? What was their reasoning behind that one?
    - jlebrech 8y ago
      too much knowledge. Maybe the rules should have stated a maximum about of experience for the chosen tech/programming language.
devhero 8y ago
Learning to code can be a daunting task at any age but entering a Coding Bootcamp where the average age range of the students is 18-25 can make an aspiring web developer who is older feel out of place. I attended a Coding Bootcamp at the age of 31, and while I am still technically considered a millennial (And I am super young at heart), even I have felt like there is a bias in tech/startup culture that leans towards a younger crowd. In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" even though the only age requirements at the event were that the participants be 18+. Although you may face some challenges as an adult coder, learning to code can be one of the most rewarding things you can do as a human being, and there is no reason to let societies biases stop you from following your dreams. In this article, we are going to talk about how you can overcome any potential bias and how you probably have a lot more advantages than you think. Let your work speak for itself The beautiful thing about tech is that it is a show and prove industry. You don't need a license to pimp out your portfolio or create an epic Chrome extension. Showcase your skills by creating a collection of side projects and demo applications. This is how your creativity can set you apart from the pack, regardless of your age. Let your website/portfolio show your personality and your projects on GitHub; showcase your creativity and problem-solving skills. Don't wear a suit Listen, I get it. You want to take your career seriously. But if you walk into an interview wearing a full three-piece suit & meanwhile the person interviewing you is wearing a t-shirt, it is going to get a little bit awkward. I am not saying you have to wear a t-shirt. Do your research and ask the interviewer beforehand what the dress code is when setting up the appointment for an in-person interview. Leveraging Industry Knowledge This is a big one. If you have been an investment banker or accountant for the last 20 years and you are just starting a new career in tech at age 45, you might feel as though you have no relevant work experience, but you couldn't be more wrong. Today, every company is becoming a tech company in some way shape or form. (And the ones who don't evolve are going extinct.) Now more than ever, software developers are in high demand at a wide range of organizations, not only Silicon Valley startups. If you are coming from a career in another field, consider applying to the tech department in that industry or disrupt that industry in a tech startup that focuses on that vertical. Your domain expertise is super valuable and relevant at this point. At a FinTech startup, the fact that you have 20 years experience in finance AND you know how to code is a HUGE asset that can set you apart from your younger less experienced counterparts. Project Management Another advantage to having a wealth of previous job experience is the ability to work with and manage a team of people. If you ever held any managerial role in another industry, I would highly recommend taking a course on SCRUM and learning the fundamental principles of running an Agile Software development team. Your people skills and seniority can be a benefit to an organization looking for a tech team lead where you are skilled at coding but also at managing the timeline and product backlog of a project. Overcoming Bias Depending on where you want to apply, there can be varying amounts of age bias. The fact is that Millennials and Gen Z make up for close to 50% of the tech workforce and when you look specifically at Silicon Valley tech startups, that number is even higher. At some companies, the bias might be worse than others, and a lot of it is subliminal and subconscious. Ageism in the Tech Industry is a real thing, but hopefully, this article provided you with some insights into overcoming age bias and even using your seniority to your advantage. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" That's interesting. What was the fear? That your years of experience and additional knowledge would be an unfair advantage?
  - jlebrech 8y ago
    I'd love a coding competition where you pick programming language and theme from a hat.
- meta_AU 8y ago
  I used to worry about being over dressed or underdressed for interviews or events. At some point I just decided that I'd never looked at someone else and considered them to be overdressed, so maybe there is no such thing. Dress in what makes you feel confident while also avoiding being underdressed. If you have a suit and the other person is in a t-shirt, they are more likely to think "looks sharp", or "they are taking this seriously" than anything negative (as long as you don't appear to feel uncomfortable in what you are wearing).
- Lio 8y ago
  > Don't wear a suit I guess this varies from country to country but personally I think that's bad advice. In my experience it's better to be over dressed than underdressed. I'm in my 40s and have never worked anywhere that had a formal dress code, it's always been wear what you want unless you're talking to a customer. I pretty much expect most dev jobs to be jeans and t-shirts. I'm a contractor now so do quite a few interviews and a suit to an interview is an easy choice. You look like you give a shit when you turn up and you can make a joke with the interviewer about being overdressed to break the ice. Much harder to do it the other way round.
  - throwaway2016a 8y ago
    Conversely I was hired at a search company (no not that one... or that one) when I got out of college and wore a suite to an interview. Come to find out later the suite almost sunk me because they felt I might not fit with the culture. Fortunately my code stood on it's own. Today I routinely wear a nice button up shirt and designer jeans (the "cheap" $80 kind not the $500 ones) to work. Which is overdressed still but I feel it is a nice medium.' Occasionally I'll take in a Broadway play (when it travels to Boston) and I always wear a suite. Sure, half the people there will probably be in T-Shirts but I like dressing nice. 15 years ago they probably wouldn't have even let you in without a suite. Edit: As one might gather from my lats comment. I'm North East USA (New England). NE is very different culturally from any part of the country. We are closest to California but here suites are more common.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
It's not so much bias but demographics. The amount of people in the software industry has been doubling every five years since programming became a thing. At 43, that means I mostly get to work with people much younger than me. The median age seems to be about 28. I also have friends that are in their fifties of which there are even less than my age group . For every 50 year old there are four 40 year olds, 16 30 year olds, and so on. I actually think it's great. Keeps me young and valued because experienced people are so scarce.
- droidist2 8y ago
  Absolutely! Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) also has this view, and I think it's much more true than the "once you hit 40 you get forced out of engineering and into management" meme.
  - some_account 8y ago
    Older people have a hard time keeping up with young guns who sit on their spare time however. You usually have family, kids, less energy etc as a 40 year old. Experience is good but I've found that it's impossible to know new things as well as young people since you have a life outside work. According to jetbrains survey, 85% of developers work on weekends.
    - GrumpyNl 8y ago
      Dont forget the evenings and days of.
    - workinthehead 8y ago
      All the young people I know are frittering away their evenings and weekends drinking and going to festivals. The idea that they are poring studiously over some machine learning textbook is pretty laughable.
YvetteBrooks 8y ago
How long did it take for you to go from starting to learn and actually getting paid for it?
jlebrech 8y ago
don't learn faddy tech, find a bunch of tech you think will last a while and be confident with them.
buserror 8y ago
While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of every "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc. Coding is a calling. You can learn anything if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best. Coding is not for everyone, it's a pipe dream. It's not because all modern tech is based on it that you should learn it -- same way as Lewis Hamilton doesn't need to be a car mechanic to be a good driver. I've started programming at 12yo, got my first paid gig at 16, and I haven't stopped being a 'programmer' (as they used to be called) since, and I'm now 49yo. I can't imagine NOT doing any 'coding'. In that time I saw countless average/bad programmers (and there are more and more of them) who /probably/ would have been better trying to follow a calling of their own... As far as having a successful career as a programmer, I think there is one major trap I've seen many, many programmers fall into. And that is 'mind sclerosis' -- ie refusal to evolve with the time/tools. People who are actually quite/very good at one set of tools sometime refuse to evolve and down these favorite toys in favor of what is perceived (often, they are) as inferior replacements. Problem is, 5 years down the line, they are no longer employable. I've seen that too many times to count. The NEXT trap is to realize that your time is limited. You can't learn everything and you have to be very, VERY selective on the set of tech you want to invest your time in. Don't bangwagon on stuff -- ask yourself whether it's likely to be a selleable skill -- if not, don't waste time on it.
- some_account 8y ago
  You are right to a degree about 'sellable tech' but I would hate programming if I had only learned Java and stuck to it because it's popular. For me, I actually feel passionate about tech choices because some tech is just awesome and fun. Most of the enterprise shit is not fun at all, but very sellable. But as a junior Dev, I would start with sellable of course.
  - buserror 8y ago
    Oh nothing stops you from having toy stuff around! I have a lot of stuff like that, but you don't spend 6 months on it, you spend an afternoon here and there on it.. Sometime it's worth 'gambling' too -- for example in 2012 I went all 3d-printer-y, learned everything firmware, hardware, design tools etc -- my justification was a bit 'thin' as in "perhaps it's the new 'micro computer' generation and I'd better be on it" -- 9 months later I decided it wasn't, and dropped it mostly. Then 2 years later I landed a HUGE paying job completely related to that tech, completely out of the blue, and that more than repaid the time I spent on it.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
People in tech like to think that they are logically, even scientifically minded but the truth is we are all subject to cultural bias, just as much as the next person. This silly idea that computers are a young man's game is going to come back and bite a great many people in the behind in a few years, when they naturally age and find themselves over what they previously considered the age threshold for the job they still love to do. I'm pretty sure that, when that time comes, the majority view will slightly shift: "you need experience to program a computer well". Yes yes- as one grows older, one learns more slowly etc etc. I will quote the words of Rita Levi-Montalcini: “At 100, I have a mind that is superior – thanks to experience – than when I was 20” [1]. Would it that we could all have as long, productive and intellectually rewarding life as she had. Is all I'm going to say. _______________ [1] https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/rita-levi-montalcini-the-nobel-prize-winning-scientist-with-a-lab-in-her-bedroom-auid-1046 https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/rita-levi-montalcini-the-nob...
- dalbasal 8y ago
  Also, the origins of this bias are fairly arbitrary. First, there is a real reason. Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such. That's balanced against older people being more experienced. It's particularly relevant in the software space, but the youthful exuberance VS experienced sobriety trade-off exists in all fields. Think of medicine, architecture, art... The bigger reason (imo) for the bias is entirely arbitrary. Software is a new, rapidly growing field. There aren't many 50-something coders because most people start a profession in their youth and there wasn't as much code in their youth. Far fewer people learned to code in the 80s than today. So.. the total number of people who code is skewed young. People see way more young coders than old ones. They assume only young people can code. The point about people learning more new things in their youth is valid regardless of field.
  - gaius 8y ago
    Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such Citation very much needed. Because that sounds like pure ageism. Who invented all the devices young people love to consume media on...?
promeus 8y ago
Ageism is real but i always had other point of view. Whats the root of this misconception? Management. Young programmers work hard, old programmers work smart. Young programmers are cheap, old are expensive. Difference is not only in mental capacity is in expertise how to approach a subject or a task. About learning in after 40: If someone has the need to learn it will happen. But if your mind is not suited for the trip, forget it, find something that gives you satisfaction and happiness..:)
sheeshkebab 8y ago
No one is too old to learn to code - in particular folks that deal with quantitative or logic skills in prior career (finance, lawyers, etc). The issue typically is that it’s hard (for even existing programmers) maintain the focus to write code 8 hours a day 5 days a week, months on end, at any age, and so it often doesn’t work out.
Finnucane 8y ago
I'm in my 50s, but I'm learning to code, but I'm not exactly new to it. I just didn't do it for a long time and now it's a rather different world from doing Fortran on 110-baud Decwriters. I got into an electrical engineering program, but dropped out when I discovered that the number of times they let you fail differential equations is finite. I ended up with a career in publishing. No regrets, really, but now publishing like other businesses becomes increasingly high-tech (I remember editing with a red pencil and doing layouts with waxers and x-acto knives). I push xml files around and write xslt and xquery scripts. I wrote our code specs for our ebook program. Now I'm developing a python app to supplement the terrible proprietary inventory system we use. I do not call myself an engineer.
- papabrown 8y ago
  Another 50+ guy here. I've been thinking about getting back into coding after a multi-decade hiatus. I taught myself to code in my early 20's. Coded through my early 30's and have been in management roles (involving software development or for technology companies) ever since. I went from Perl to Java (hated Java) to PHP and have played around with tons of languages (just enough to complete the project) in between. Right now, PHP is my go-to language for my own projects simply because I'm used to it. I still hack stuff. I run a few websites. I write plugins for WordPress. I write little PHP or Bash scripts to automate some stuff on my server. Recently, I've been diving into Swift. I hope to get good enough at that, that I can get a remote job and semi-retire. For me, working from home would be almost like working part-time. I don't mean that it's that easy, just that a lot of management and office politics is so soul sucking that it feels like you're working 24 hours a day. It's tough coming back. But, I've never strayed too far from coding to begin with. It seems the advantage I have is experience. I've been there and done that before, even if I wasn't the one writing the code. Even being in management, I still enjoy sitting in a room with engineers and white boarding solutions. And having worked in management, I have a better understanding of the "why" behind features and can suggest different paths to get to the same outcome. I guess I'll find out if you're too old to code when I start looking for jobs :-)
  - workinthehead 8y ago
to_bpr 8y ago
Has anyone ever went the opposite direction (e.g. tech into investment banking) at a later age, and if so how barrier-absent/non-ageist did that prove to be?
arif_sohaib 8y ago
What I really hate about articles like this is they try to convince people we are just rolling in money and job opportunities just staring at our screens and use that to flood the market with people who don't care about anything but the money and use them to lower salaries for the rest of us. I don't seem to come across nearly as much articles like this for nurses, paralegals, chefs and other such professions that pay as well and might be far more rewarding for certain types of people and the jobs are probably easier to get, based on the number of bootcamps and job hunting services solely for computer science professionals.
- workinthehead 8y ago
  Take a look around you. Anyone who tried to get into coding just for the money washed out long ago, or if they're lucky they're computer janitors at gigantocorp.
mabynogy 8y ago
We miss highlevel IDEs (like Smalltalk, Excel or even Scratch and Eve) for people who are ready to program something but won't be able to use the tradional workflow based on shell commands and textfiles. Expecting people to massively learn programming as we know it is an illusion and even a scam (like bootcamps).

92 points by devhero 8y ago

>> In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" even though the only age requirements at the event were that the participants be 18+. Wow. Would be great to hear further details around what happened there.

devhero 8y ago
We won the hackathon after talking to the judges
- welly 8y ago
  Too old to compete? How the hell did they justify that one? Because you were too old, you'd have an unfair advantage? What was their reasoning behind that one?
  - jlebrech 8y ago
    too much knowledge. Maybe the rules should have stated a maximum about of experience for the chosen tech/programming language.

devhero 8y ago

Learning to code can be a daunting task at any age but entering a Coding Bootcamp where the average age range of the students is 18-25 can make an aspiring web developer who is older feel out of place. I attended a Coding Bootcamp at the age of 31, and while I am still technically considered a millennial (And I am super young at heart), even I have felt like there is a bias in tech/startup culture that leans towards a younger crowd. In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" even though the only age requirements at the event were that the participants be 18+. Although you may face some challenges as an adult coder, learning to code can be one of the most rewarding things you can do as a human being, and there is no reason to let societies biases stop you from following your dreams. In this article, we are going to talk about how you can overcome any potential bias and how you probably have a lot more advantages than you think. Let your work speak for itself The beautiful thing about tech is that it is a show and prove industry. You don't need a license to pimp out your portfolio or create an epic Chrome extension. Showcase your skills by creating a collection of side projects and demo applications. This is how your creativity can set you apart from the pack, regardless of your age. Let your website/portfolio show your personality and your projects on GitHub; showcase your creativity and problem-solving skills. Don't wear a suit Listen, I get it. You want to take your career seriously. But if you walk into an interview wearing a full three-piece suit & meanwhile the person interviewing you is wearing a t-shirt, it is going to get a little bit awkward. I am not saying you have to wear a t-shirt. Do your research and ask the interviewer beforehand what the dress code is when setting up the appointment for an in-person interview. Leveraging Industry Knowledge This is a big one. If you have been an investment banker or accountant for the last 20 years and you are just starting a new career in tech at age 45, you might feel as though you have no relevant work experience, but you couldn't be more wrong. Today, every company is becoming a tech company in some way shape or form. (And the ones who don't evolve are going extinct.) Now more than ever, software developers are in high demand at a wide range of organizations, not only Silicon Valley startups. If you are coming from a career in another field, consider applying to the tech department in that industry or disrupt that industry in a tech startup that focuses on that vertical. Your domain expertise is super valuable and relevant at this point. At a FinTech startup, the fact that you have 20 years experience in finance AND you know how to code is a HUGE asset that can set you apart from your younger less experienced counterparts. Project Management Another advantage to having a wealth of previous job experience is the ability to work with and manage a team of people. If you ever held any managerial role in another industry, I would highly recommend taking a course on SCRUM and learning the fundamental principles of running an Agile Software development team. Your people skills and seniority can be a benefit to an organization looking for a tech team lead where you are skilled at coding but also at managing the timeline and product backlog of a project. Overcoming Bias Depending on where you want to apply, there can be varying amounts of age bias. The fact is that Millennials and Gen Z make up for close to 50% of the tech workforce and when you look specifically at Silicon Valley tech startups, that number is even higher. At some companies, the bias might be worse than others, and a lot of it is subliminal and subconscious. Ageism in the Tech Industry is a real thing, but hopefully, this article provided you with some insights into overcoming age bias and even using your seniority to your advantage. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

EliRivers 8y ago
In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" That's interesting. What was the fear? That your years of experience and additional knowledge would be an unfair advantage?
- jlebrech 8y ago
  I'd love a coding competition where you pick programming language and theme from a hat.
meta_AU 8y ago
I used to worry about being over dressed or underdressed for interviews or events. At some point I just decided that I'd never looked at someone else and considered them to be overdressed, so maybe there is no such thing. Dress in what makes you feel confident while also avoiding being underdressed. If you have a suit and the other person is in a t-shirt, they are more likely to think "looks sharp", or "they are taking this seriously" than anything negative (as long as you don't appear to feel uncomfortable in what you are wearing).
Lio 8y ago
> Don't wear a suit I guess this varies from country to country but personally I think that's bad advice. In my experience it's better to be over dressed than underdressed. I'm in my 40s and have never worked anywhere that had a formal dress code, it's always been wear what you want unless you're talking to a customer. I pretty much expect most dev jobs to be jeans and t-shirts. I'm a contractor now so do quite a few interviews and a suit to an interview is an easy choice. You look like you give a shit when you turn up and you can make a joke with the interviewer about being overdressed to break the ice. Much harder to do it the other way round.
- throwaway2016a 8y ago
  Conversely I was hired at a search company (no not that one... or that one) when I got out of college and wore a suite to an interview. Come to find out later the suite almost sunk me because they felt I might not fit with the culture. Fortunately my code stood on it's own. Today I routinely wear a nice button up shirt and designer jeans (the "cheap" $80 kind not the $500 ones) to work. Which is overdressed still but I feel it is a nice medium.' Occasionally I'll take in a Broadway play (when it travels to Boston) and I always wear a suite. Sure, half the people there will probably be in T-Shirts but I like dressing nice. 15 years ago they probably wouldn't have even let you in without a suite. Edit: As one might gather from my lats comment. I'm North East USA (New England). NE is very different culturally from any part of the country. We are closest to California but here suites are more common.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

It's not so much bias but demographics. The amount of people in the software industry has been doubling every five years since programming became a thing. At 43, that means I mostly get to work with people much younger than me. The median age seems to be about 28. I also have friends that are in their fifties of which there are even less than my age group . For every 50 year old there are four 40 year olds, 16 30 year olds, and so on. I actually think it's great. Keeps me young and valued because experienced people are so scarce.

droidist2 8y ago
Absolutely! Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) also has this view, and I think it's much more true than the "once you hit 40 you get forced out of engineering and into management" meme.
- some_account 8y ago
  Older people have a hard time keeping up with young guns who sit on their spare time however. You usually have family, kids, less energy etc as a 40 year old. Experience is good but I've found that it's impossible to know new things as well as young people since you have a life outside work. According to jetbrains survey, 85% of developers work on weekends.
  - GrumpyNl 8y ago
    Dont forget the evenings and days of.
  - workinthehead 8y ago
    All the young people I know are frittering away their evenings and weekends drinking and going to festivals. The idea that they are poring studiously over some machine learning textbook is pretty laughable.

YvetteBrooks 8y ago

How long did it take for you to go from starting to learn and actually getting paid for it?

jlebrech 8y ago

don't learn faddy tech, find a bunch of tech you think will last a while and be confident with them.

buserror 8y ago

While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of every "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc. Coding is a calling. You can learn anything if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best. Coding is not for everyone, it's a pipe dream. It's not because all modern tech is based on it that you should learn it -- same way as Lewis Hamilton doesn't need to be a car mechanic to be a good driver. I've started programming at 12yo, got my first paid gig at 16, and I haven't stopped being a 'programmer' (as they used to be called) since, and I'm now 49yo. I can't imagine NOT doing any 'coding'. In that time I saw countless average/bad programmers (and there are more and more of them) who /probably/ would have been better trying to follow a calling of their own... As far as having a successful career as a programmer, I think there is one major trap I've seen many, many programmers fall into. And that is 'mind sclerosis' -- ie refusal to evolve with the time/tools. People who are actually quite/very good at one set of tools sometime refuse to evolve and down these favorite toys in favor of what is perceived (often, they are) as inferior replacements. Problem is, 5 years down the line, they are no longer employable. I've seen that too many times to count. The NEXT trap is to realize that your time is limited. You can't learn everything and you have to be very, VERY selective on the set of tech you want to invest your time in. Don't bangwagon on stuff -- ask yourself whether it's likely to be a selleable skill -- if not, don't waste time on it.

some_account 8y ago
You are right to a degree about 'sellable tech' but I would hate programming if I had only learned Java and stuck to it because it's popular. For me, I actually feel passionate about tech choices because some tech is just awesome and fun. Most of the enterprise shit is not fun at all, but very sellable. But as a junior Dev, I would start with sellable of course.
- buserror 8y ago
  Oh nothing stops you from having toy stuff around! I have a lot of stuff like that, but you don't spend 6 months on it, you spend an afternoon here and there on it.. Sometime it's worth 'gambling' too -- for example in 2012 I went all 3d-printer-y, learned everything firmware, hardware, design tools etc -- my justification was a bit 'thin' as in "perhaps it's the new 'micro computer' generation and I'd better be on it" -- 9 months later I decided it wasn't, and dropped it mostly. Then 2 years later I landed a HUGE paying job completely related to that tech, completely out of the blue, and that more than repaid the time I spent on it.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

People in tech like to think that they are logically, even scientifically minded but the truth is we are all subject to cultural bias, just as much as the next person. This silly idea that computers are a young man's game is going to come back and bite a great many people in the behind in a few years, when they naturally age and find themselves over what they previously considered the age threshold for the job they still love to do. I'm pretty sure that, when that time comes, the majority view will slightly shift: "you need experience to program a computer well". Yes yes- as one grows older, one learns more slowly etc etc. I will quote the words of Rita Levi-Montalcini: “At 100, I have a mind that is superior – thanks to experience – than when I was 20” [1]. Would it that we could all have as long, productive and intellectually rewarding life as she had. Is all I'm going to say. _______________ [1] https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/rita-levi-montalcini-the-nobel-prize-winning-scientist-with-a-lab-in-her-bedroom-auid-1046 https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/rita-levi-montalcini-the-nob...

dalbasal 8y ago
Also, the origins of this bias are fairly arbitrary. First, there is a real reason. Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such. That's balanced against older people being more experienced. It's particularly relevant in the software space, but the youthful exuberance VS experienced sobriety trade-off exists in all fields. Think of medicine, architecture, art... The bigger reason (imo) for the bias is entirely arbitrary. Software is a new, rapidly growing field. There aren't many 50-something coders because most people start a profession in their youth and there wasn't as much code in their youth. Far fewer people learned to code in the 80s than today. So.. the total number of people who code is skewed young. People see way more young coders than old ones. They assume only young people can code. The point about people learning more new things in their youth is valid regardless of field.
- gaius 8y ago
  Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such Citation very much needed. Because that sounds like pure ageism. Who invented all the devices young people love to consume media on...?

promeus 8y ago

Ageism is real but i always had other point of view. Whats the root of this misconception? Management. Young programmers work hard, old programmers work smart. Young programmers are cheap, old are expensive. Difference is not only in mental capacity is in expertise how to approach a subject or a task. About learning in after 40: If someone has the need to learn it will happen. But if your mind is not suited for the trip, forget it, find something that gives you satisfaction and happiness..:)

sheeshkebab 8y ago

No one is too old to learn to code - in particular folks that deal with quantitative or logic skills in prior career (finance, lawyers, etc). The issue typically is that it’s hard (for even existing programmers) maintain the focus to write code 8 hours a day 5 days a week, months on end, at any age, and so it often doesn’t work out.

Finnucane 8y ago

I'm in my 50s, but I'm learning to code, but I'm not exactly new to it. I just didn't do it for a long time and now it's a rather different world from doing Fortran on 110-baud Decwriters. I got into an electrical engineering program, but dropped out when I discovered that the number of times they let you fail differential equations is finite. I ended up with a career in publishing. No regrets, really, but now publishing like other businesses becomes increasingly high-tech (I remember editing with a red pencil and doing layouts with waxers and x-acto knives). I push xml files around and write xslt and xquery scripts. I wrote our code specs for our ebook program. Now I'm developing a python app to supplement the terrible proprietary inventory system we use. I do not call myself an engineer.

papabrown 8y ago
Another 50+ guy here. I've been thinking about getting back into coding after a multi-decade hiatus. I taught myself to code in my early 20's. Coded through my early 30's and have been in management roles (involving software development or for technology companies) ever since. I went from Perl to Java (hated Java) to PHP and have played around with tons of languages (just enough to complete the project) in between. Right now, PHP is my go-to language for my own projects simply because I'm used to it. I still hack stuff. I run a few websites. I write plugins for WordPress. I write little PHP or Bash scripts to automate some stuff on my server. Recently, I've been diving into Swift. I hope to get good enough at that, that I can get a remote job and semi-retire. For me, working from home would be almost like working part-time. I don't mean that it's that easy, just that a lot of management and office politics is so soul sucking that it feels like you're working 24 hours a day. It's tough coming back. But, I've never strayed too far from coding to begin with. It seems the advantage I have is experience. I've been there and done that before, even if I wasn't the one writing the code. Even being in management, I still enjoy sitting in a room with engineers and white boarding solutions. And having worked in management, I have a better understanding of the "why" behind features and can suggest different paths to get to the same outcome. I guess I'll find out if you're too old to code when I start looking for jobs :-)
- workinthehead 8y ago

to_bpr 8y ago

Has anyone ever went the opposite direction (e.g. tech into investment banking) at a later age, and if so how barrier-absent/non-ageist did that prove to be?

arif_sohaib 8y ago

What I really hate about articles like this is they try to convince people we are just rolling in money and job opportunities just staring at our screens and use that to flood the market with people who don't care about anything but the money and use them to lower salaries for the rest of us. I don't seem to come across nearly as much articles like this for nurses, paralegals, chefs and other such professions that pay as well and might be far more rewarding for certain types of people and the jobs are probably easier to get, based on the number of bootcamps and job hunting services solely for computer science professionals.

workinthehead 8y ago
Take a look around you. Anyone who tried to get into coding just for the money washed out long ago, or if they're lucky they're computer janitors at gigantocorp.

mabynogy 8y ago

We miss highlevel IDEs (like Smalltalk, Excel or even Scratch and Eve) for people who are ready to program something but won't be able to use the tradional workflow based on shell commands and textfiles. Expecting people to massively learn programming as we know it is an illusion and even a scam (like bootcamps).