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I actually haven't met many being a scientific programmer in a science with little need for programming. So, I guess I'm the most talented. I was at my best i

I actually haven't met many being a scientific programmer in a science with little need for programming. So, I guess I'm the most talented. I was at my best in my 40's, but at 72 I'm still very good, but slow.

minipci1321 8y ago
Care to tell what makes you slower, compared to your 40-ies? We need to prepare ;-)
- abraae 8y ago
  Not the OP but to me, as best as I can tell from some self-analyzing, as you get older your brain just doesn't fizz and spark like it did way back when. It works in a different way - more pattern recognition, less raw grunt. Could be because of biochemistry, or maybe just that you don't have the blissful ignorance of youth, you know there are limits, you don't tend to just hurl yourself against the fences quite as readily. Another factor might be that the industry has changed substantially, which makes you feel slower by comparison. When I started out, there were few libraries or open source. To do anything, you knuckled down and churned out code, a lot of it. These days the first step in any greenfield project is a lot of Googling, and your job is more about identifying products, libraries, APIs and stitching them together. I personally find that a lot more frustrating because of the context switching - hence feeling of slowness, less time churning out your own code.
  - lbriner 8y ago
    I think this might describe what you are referring to: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206155947.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206155947.h... I heard somebody say that as you age, you rely more on memory to infer the correct decision whereas when you are young, memories are few and decisions based either on gut feel or the current context. I guess that means that older people are more likely to do something they have already done because it is familiar and will work rather than do something that might be newer/better/faster but which would only be deduced by more abstract analysis?
    - rc_hadoken 8y ago
      Question: do you exercise? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/ Let's not lump all older people into the same cognitive malaise. Disclaimer: I'm in my late 20s.
      - oldmancoyote 8y ago
        I do. I climbed stairs for 45 minutes four days a week for 2 decades. At 70 I was doing 1780 steps at a time. After my metatarsals complained, I began interval training on a stationary bike. During the summers I scramble up and down the Klamath Mountains looking for gold. It won't last forever, but I'm ok for now.
    - thanatropism 8y ago
      There's still a lot of nature vs. nurture to that. A lot more experience = a lot more failures.
      - oldmancoyote 8y ago
        "A lot more experience = a lot more failures." YES. Your failures both form you and inform you at least as much as your successes.
        thanatropism 8y ago
        They also make you more pessimistic. Maybe rightly so.
        oldmancoyote 8y ago
        I look at that differently. My favorite epigram goes like this: Very few worthwhile projects are ever successful on the first attempt. Failure is just another useful metric giving guidance on the re-formulation of the problem and the solution. Failure has nothing what-so-ever to do with guilt. For the longest time as a young man I did not understand this. I though something was wrong with me because I failed so often.
  - romeisendcoming 8y ago
    Most of us from 50-75 are capable of rolling our own. We did it in our 30s and edit it. Hope that answers any questions regarding reuse, language adaptation , etc..
- oldmancoyote 8y ago
  It's the cumulative effect of lots of things. When I pose a question to my subconscious, it takes longer to get an answer. I make a few more mistakes, especially jumping to conclusions. It takes longer to debug them. Sustaining a train of thought is more difficult as my ADHD is a little worse, but writing out my thought processes (often in Q and A form) helps tremendously. Getting a synoptic view is definitely harder. All these things slow me down. On the other hand, 51 years of adapting to new technology has strengthened my confidence that I can cope with problems. Having lost the usual confidence of youth, I have replaced it with determination based on the repeated experience of failure and the knowledge that I have overcome them. It's a different kind of confidence. I am greatly envious of the education you folks have, but I make do.
  - minipci1321 8y ago
    Thanks a lot for your answer! I wonder whether you may be too hard on yourself, how much of this should be written off on the today's objective conditions, and not on subjective aging. I am over 50 and am genuinely interested in the discussion, as I have to maintain my employability for long time to come. > When I pose a question to my subconscious, it takes longer to get an answer. This! But I always felt my subconscious gives answers more eagerly the more I load it. These days I cannot load it to the same degree as when I was younger, but there are good explanations: a) the nature of the job is different, nobody will let me go off radar, people now have to take calls even on vacations, let alone in the workdays. b) the nature of issues I am solving is also different, more system-wide now, it is hard to have all the knowledge about a bigger system, and complete knowledge is required to load the subconscious IMO (I think you see what I mean). > I make a few more mistakes, especially jumping to conclusions No questions about that one ;-). However, I managed even to extract value out of it. I am debugging issues in complex systems without expensive equipment and frequently without an access to them. Every once in a while I jump and don't land on the target, but overall balance looks good enough for my employer to keep me. > Sustaining a train of thought is more difficult as my ADHD is a little worse, But again, isn't the way we do things these days simply very different, prompting this? I recall in my young days there were a dozen of us in a small room, and one could hear flies, well, fly. Also (am not nostalgic of that), not having cheap direct access to the computer (it was either batch submission or the night shift), required careful planning and bracing for any possibility. Now it is much easier to "just rebuild and try", but turns out, this doesn't always save as much time as one would hope.
crucialfelix 8y ago
I saw Miles Davis play a few years before he died. His band was all young, playing hard and fast. Miles walks slowly across the stage and plays one mind bending chord on a keyboard and the entire mood changed, totally reconfigured the whole composition. Conservation of energy. Coolest MF ever.
Dowwie 8y ago
What science has little need for programming these days?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- oldmancoyote 8y ago
  It's a comparative thing, but I worked as a geologist/programmer. Nobody can avoid using computers. They are just so damn useful.

minipci1321 8y ago

Care to tell what makes you slower, compared to your 40-ies? We need to prepare ;-)

abraae 8y ago
Not the OP but to me, as best as I can tell from some self-analyzing, as you get older your brain just doesn't fizz and spark like it did way back when. It works in a different way - more pattern recognition, less raw grunt. Could be because of biochemistry, or maybe just that you don't have the blissful ignorance of youth, you know there are limits, you don't tend to just hurl yourself against the fences quite as readily. Another factor might be that the industry has changed substantially, which makes you feel slower by comparison. When I started out, there were few libraries or open source. To do anything, you knuckled down and churned out code, a lot of it. These days the first step in any greenfield project is a lot of Googling, and your job is more about identifying products, libraries, APIs and stitching them together. I personally find that a lot more frustrating because of the context switching - hence feeling of slowness, less time churning out your own code.
- lbriner 8y ago
  I think this might describe what you are referring to: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206155947.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206155947.h... I heard somebody say that as you age, you rely more on memory to infer the correct decision whereas when you are young, memories are few and decisions based either on gut feel or the current context. I guess that means that older people are more likely to do something they have already done because it is familiar and will work rather than do something that might be newer/better/faster but which would only be deduced by more abstract analysis?
  - rc_hadoken 8y ago
    Question: do you exercise? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/ Let's not lump all older people into the same cognitive malaise. Disclaimer: I'm in my late 20s.
    - oldmancoyote 8y ago
      I do. I climbed stairs for 45 minutes four days a week for 2 decades. At 70 I was doing 1780 steps at a time. After my metatarsals complained, I began interval training on a stationary bike. During the summers I scramble up and down the Klamath Mountains looking for gold. It won't last forever, but I'm ok for now.
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    There's still a lot of nature vs. nurture to that. A lot more experience = a lot more failures.
    - oldmancoyote 8y ago
      "A lot more experience = a lot more failures." YES. Your failures both form you and inform you at least as much as your successes.
      - thanatropism 8y ago
        They also make you more pessimistic. Maybe rightly so.
        oldmancoyote 8y ago
        I look at that differently. My favorite epigram goes like this: Very few worthwhile projects are ever successful on the first attempt. Failure is just another useful metric giving guidance on the re-formulation of the problem and the solution. Failure has nothing what-so-ever to do with guilt. For the longest time as a young man I did not understand this. I though something was wrong with me because I failed so often.
- romeisendcoming 8y ago
  Most of us from 50-75 are capable of rolling our own. We did it in our 30s and edit it. Hope that answers any questions regarding reuse, language adaptation , etc..
oldmancoyote 8y ago
It's the cumulative effect of lots of things. When I pose a question to my subconscious, it takes longer to get an answer. I make a few more mistakes, especially jumping to conclusions. It takes longer to debug them. Sustaining a train of thought is more difficult as my ADHD is a little worse, but writing out my thought processes (often in Q and A form) helps tremendously. Getting a synoptic view is definitely harder. All these things slow me down. On the other hand, 51 years of adapting to new technology has strengthened my confidence that I can cope with problems. Having lost the usual confidence of youth, I have replaced it with determination based on the repeated experience of failure and the knowledge that I have overcome them. It's a different kind of confidence. I am greatly envious of the education you folks have, but I make do.
- minipci1321 8y ago
  Thanks a lot for your answer! I wonder whether you may be too hard on yourself, how much of this should be written off on the today's objective conditions, and not on subjective aging. I am over 50 and am genuinely interested in the discussion, as I have to maintain my employability for long time to come. > When I pose a question to my subconscious, it takes longer to get an answer. This! But I always felt my subconscious gives answers more eagerly the more I load it. These days I cannot load it to the same degree as when I was younger, but there are good explanations: a) the nature of the job is different, nobody will let me go off radar, people now have to take calls even on vacations, let alone in the workdays. b) the nature of issues I am solving is also different, more system-wide now, it is hard to have all the knowledge about a bigger system, and complete knowledge is required to load the subconscious IMO (I think you see what I mean). > I make a few more mistakes, especially jumping to conclusions No questions about that one ;-). However, I managed even to extract value out of it. I am debugging issues in complex systems without expensive equipment and frequently without an access to them. Every once in a while I jump and don't land on the target, but overall balance looks good enough for my employer to keep me. > Sustaining a train of thought is more difficult as my ADHD is a little worse, But again, isn't the way we do things these days simply very different, prompting this? I recall in my young days there were a dozen of us in a small room, and one could hear flies, well, fly. Also (am not nostalgic of that), not having cheap direct access to the computer (it was either batch submission or the night shift), required careful planning and bracing for any possibility. Now it is much easier to "just rebuild and try", but turns out, this doesn't always save as much time as one would hope.

crucialfelix 8y ago

I saw Miles Davis play a few years before he died. His band was all young, playing hard and fast. Miles walks slowly across the stage and plays one mind bending chord on a keyboard and the entire mood changed, totally reconfigured the whole composition. Conservation of energy. Coolest MF ever.

Dowwie 8y ago

What science has little need for programming these days?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
oldmancoyote 8y ago
It's a comparative thing, but I worked as a geologist/programmer. Nobody can avoid using computers. They are just so damn useful.