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The real problem if you're still programming at age 30 isn't that your brain has deteriorated. It's overcoming the daily ennui that comes with the realization t

The real problem if you're still programming at age 30 isn't that your brain has deteriorated. It's overcoming the daily ennui that comes with the realization that you could have been a multi millionaire by now if you would have picked better projects to work on. All those old programmers aren't slow because they are dumb, they are slow because they are depressed.

nvarsj 16y ago
That's quite a generalization. Not everyone needs money to be happy. Some of us just like to code.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  The depressing part is that many of the people who ended up multi-millionaires also had a ton of fun coding & running the business. It's not an either/or: you can have fun coding and get rich doing it. It's just that the getting rich part requires a lot of luck in addition to the coding. Most people, when given the choice between "fun" and "fun and money", will take the fun and money. After all, I know very few people who will turn down a chance at free money.
- maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  It's not that you don't like to code, or need money to be happy. It's just the weird economic structure of startups and the software industry kinda lends itself to "missed opportunity" depression. Look at it like professional athletes. Many guys just like to play basketball. But, I'm going to bet guys who were close to playing in the NBA and just didn't make it, are probably at least kinda depressed about it, whether or not they still like playing pickup games.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I wasn't around back then, but from what I've read, it feels this used to be somewhat different: the people at Bell Labs, or the old MIT AI lab, and similar places, genuinely thought they had the best jobs in the world, at least for them. I'm sure occasionally some of them wondered about what it would've been like to found Intel or AMD or Apple, but for the most part they seem to have been happy to have a job where the business side was someone else's job, and they got paid to just work on interesting technical problems all day. I don't get the feeling that someone like Ken Thompson ever was particularly regretful that he spent his career at Bell Labs rather than founding a startup, because he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. Perhaps the technical freedom some of those research labs offered is part of it? I can imagine there being more regret if you missed money-making opportunities and didn't have a great deal of freedom to choose your own technical problems.

nvarsj 16y ago

That's quite a generalization. Not everyone needs money to be happy. Some of us just like to code.

nostrademons 16y ago
The depressing part is that many of the people who ended up multi-millionaires also had a ton of fun coding & running the business. It's not an either/or: you can have fun coding and get rich doing it. It's just that the getting rich part requires a lot of luck in addition to the coding. Most people, when given the choice between "fun" and "fun and money", will take the fun and money. After all, I know very few people who will turn down a chance at free money.
maxawaytoolong 16y ago
It's not that you don't like to code, or need money to be happy. It's just the weird economic structure of startups and the software industry kinda lends itself to "missed opportunity" depression. Look at it like professional athletes. Many guys just like to play basketball. But, I'm going to bet guys who were close to playing in the NBA and just didn't make it, are probably at least kinda depressed about it, whether or not they still like playing pickup games.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I wasn't around back then, but from what I've read, it feels this used to be somewhat different: the people at Bell Labs, or the old MIT AI lab, and similar places, genuinely thought they had the best jobs in the world, at least for them. I'm sure occasionally some of them wondered about what it would've been like to found Intel or AMD or Apple, but for the most part they seem to have been happy to have a job where the business side was someone else's job, and they got paid to just work on interesting technical problems all day. I don't get the feeling that someone like Ken Thompson ever was particularly regretful that he spent his career at Bell Labs rather than founding a startup, because he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. Perhaps the technical freedom some of those research labs offered is part of it? I can imagine there being more regret if you missed money-making opportunities and didn't have a great deal of freedom to choose your own technical problems.