11 ms·

In Aging Singapore, 65-Year-Olds Are Learning How to Code

96 points by danso 7y ago

mfcl 7y ago
The title says that 65-year-olds are learning how to code, yet the article itself only mentions one example. It does not provide more data, except about the decline of productivity and the aging population. A 65-year-old learning how to code is still probably very unusual.
paulpauper 7y ago
>Now she uses her new-found skills to automate work processes like doing reports, drafting budgets and other repetitive tasks, saving her hours in her day. lol i have been using computers for along time and i still have not done that yet. Rather than lots of repetitive tasks it seems i have to focus on a few tasks that require precision and cannot be automated. Very seldom can i recall ever being in a situation where i would spend hours doing something that could be automated. Also trying to code a program to automate the task would take longer than doing the task. I think i can recall one time 2 months ago needing to check 70 accounts and doing it by hand which took a half hour was way faster than trying to spend hours trying to code a program to do it.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  You don't know what she is doing. Maybe now she can adjust a report to return the figures she wants, for just a week's worth of data or whatever. Most people can benefit by becoming more computer literate.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  In my scrappy work environment I have to help set up some subscriber emails on the side of my main production engineering work. We’re short-handed. Every week, sometimes multiple times in a week, I get effort approval emails. For each item in the approvals list I have to file a ticket, filling out the details expressed in the email. Doing this once maybe takes half an hour. Doing it every week, or more often, gets annoying, frustrating, etc. Writing something to take care of it in some spare moments is making the process just that much less of a burden. In short, if you do it only once in a while—sure, not a big deal. If you’re doing that banal half-hour task on the regular and it blocks you from getting something else done that benefits from more attention then the effort expended to automate it makes a lot of sense.
- prashnts 7y ago
  Automation doesn’t need to be end to end. Consider a case if you need to do an aggregation with pdfs, simple script to read and pull the data points is pretty trivial. You will still need to type the results by hand in excel (for example), but that « automation » just reduced the effort it’d take otherwise.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Huh? pdftotext massage with grep, tr, sed, awk, sort, uniq, etc paste into Calc or Excel (or some SQL first)
Clubber 7y ago
Translation: Singapore's government is failing its elderly generation. A very small percentage are able to keep working and supporting themselves for a few more months / years by learning how to program, in probably the most basic sense. Everyone else is unable to find work but unable to receive retirement benefits that they've paid for during their working years in taxes. This circumstance is due to either corruption or ineptitude, or both. This will probably be a more prominent story in the US soon as well. Save your money as best you can and don't count on governments to fulfill their promises. When I was growing up, the retirement age in the US was 65. Now it's 66 and will soon be 67. By the time I retire, it will probably be higher. It's blamed on the population living longer, yet the average lifespan has been decreasing recently. The government failed (or ignored) the fairly obvious result of modern medicine making people live longer and did not plan for it, and continues to not plan for it other than cutting benefits. How many 66 year old programmers do you know?
- chrisco255 7y ago
  The average lifespan decreased by something like 0.1 years. It's a slight dip in an otherwise upward trend in life expectancy and it's mostly due to opioid crisis. At any rate, I fully expect social security benefits to be lowered by 2030 as we are approaching an inflection point in expenditures versus S.S. taxes taken in.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  Let's make sure social security is around forever, and available for those that actually need it. We can slightly increase taxes and slightly reduce benefits for wealthy people to keep social security working basically forever. I'm fortunate to be a highly compensated engineer. If I'm making say $250k a year, I could pay a little bit more in taxes to help the system be sustainable, and also more likely to be there if I do need it. Taxes for this benefit are capped at $8,240 or 6.2% of salary up to $132,900 [1]. The reason taxes are capped is because benefits are capped. My company could pay a bit more in payroll taxes and they wouldn't care, they'd love to hire 5 more experienced and well compensated engineers like me. There's a similar issue on social security wages - let's say I accumulate $5 million in assets at retirement, I'm going to be earning a pretty good amount of income even when not working, so you could reduce my social security (maybe via extra taxes?). People grumble about that money, "it's mine, I paid for it my whole career" - and you did pay for it in taxes. But things like social security also serve as a crucial part of our weaker societal safety net in America. I want it to be there for people that need it. I probably won't need it in retirement, but most people will. If I do lose all my money, or say I wasn't as lucky in my life and was hurt or not able to accumulate so much wealth, I want it to be there - for me and others. [1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit
nubela 7y ago
As a Singaporean, this is another "feel good" article about Singapore that cherry picks anecdotal examples to paint a false image.
- analognoise 7y ago
  Could you elaborate? What's the true image?
  - mfcl 7y ago
    The true image is that 65-year-olds are not learning how to code.
    - Aloha 7y ago
      > The true image is that 65-year-olds are not learning how to code. The true image is that most 65-year-olds are not learning how to code.
      - epx 7y ago
        If just one leant to code at 65 this is so great to hear about.
        WalterBright 7y ago
        My uncle in his 60's returned to the university to get an advanced degree in vulcanology.
        coldtea 7y ago
        Several people do it, like several people do matchstick Eiffel Towers or have a crocodile as a pet. It's still rare, and in no way anything statistically significant to write home about, nor the "way out" for the serious problem of old people forced to work.
      - 7y ago
imtringued 7y ago
Why does a 65 year old person still have to make a long term investment into their career? Isn't that person going to retire in their 70s or earlier?
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Most people find fulfillment and purpose by doing useful work. Otherwise retirement can be a living death.
  - siquick 7y ago
    Foregoing your retirement to make wealthy shareholders wealthier is not useful work. Community work is where "bored" retirees would be better off putting their focus.
- menzoic 7y ago
  That's the issue at hand. Singapore's economy can't support retirement in the way you think about it from your country.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    Why can't Singapore's economy support it? Isn't Singapore richer than almost every country that does have some form of public pensions?
    - Temasik 7y ago
      this please answer
- cryptozeus 7y ago
  Not everyone can..same case in states too
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>> Valerie Yeong-Tan, who’s worked for 47 years at Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., is one such example. Give this woman her pension already. Learning to code cause you want to at 65 is very different from having to....
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
I know many comments were about how the article was a cherry picked example, but I was still glad the example seemed to be a useful one. Honestly, I think even most programmers would benefit from refreshers on how to automate large parts of their workflow (I myself wish I was much more of a sed/awk guru than I am), and how to use the command line and the standard command line tools to get things done. Not to be too harsh but I think it's unrealistic to expect more than a tiny percentage of people who are very late in their careers to learn to be true programmers, but I think most people could learn bot-like automation tools to improve their productivity.
redact207 7y ago
When I worked in Singapore, it was heartbreaking to see how the elderly were forced to take low paying positions clearing tables and being servers at McDonald's. Not because it's "bad" work or anything, but because in their aging years they were forced to due to a social service system that failed them. This is obviously a fluff piece that tries to promote the resilience and motivation of the aging population, yet just highlights how bad things are since people have to work til they die.
- mirimir 7y ago
  So has Singapore's social services gone bankrupt? Did they just run out of young people to fund it? Edit: OK, OK, I found a 2011 Brookings report that explains it: "Social Policy in Singapore: A Crucible of Individual Responsibility".[0] Basically, social services mandates savings, with more or less self-managed investment, but doesn't guarantee benefits. And it has emphasized home ownership. So no, their system isn't at risk of bankruptcy. But then: > Like the standard criticism of defined-contribution pension plans, the standard criticism of somewhat minimalist social policy such as that which characterises Singapore is that it does not cover enough risks and actual problems faced by the poor, the elderly, and the sick and disabled. As we have seen, European, Scandinavian and North American countries spend around 35% of their GDPs on social programmes. Although a comparable figure on total social welfare spending is not available for Singapore, the Government of Singapore spends only 16.7% of its GDP on all its programmes, a figure that is less than half as much as European and Scandinavian programmes spent just on social welfare. So there we have it: individual responsibility. 0) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/social-policy-in-singapore-a-crucible-of-individual-responsibility/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/social-policy-in-singapor...
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    "Individual responsibility" is code for "privatised profits from essential public services." Which in turn is code for "Heaven help you if you're poor or just plain unlucky."
    - mirimir 7y ago
PorterDuff 7y ago
I'm rather hoping to forget how to code at age 65.
patientplatypus 7y ago
This is the sort of thing that belongs on https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/
golemotron 7y ago
In Asia and Latin America, children support their parents as they age. The West created this dream of individualism where each person had to become entirely self-sufficient through their savings and investments (employer managed or not). It's not surprising that it is more fragile.
- Temasik 7y ago
  so the elderly in singapore work for free at retirement age?
- chillacy 7y ago
  Singapore is part of Asia, and has a majority ethnically Chinese population, what does the west have to do with this?
  - golemotron 7y ago
    West-ernization.
cylinder 7y ago
I see Americans are now exporting Hustler Porn to Asia.

96 points by danso 7y ago

mfcl 7y ago

The title says that 65-year-olds are learning how to code, yet the article itself only mentions one example. It does not provide more data, except about the decline of productivity and the aging population. A 65-year-old learning how to code is still probably very unusual.

paulpauper 7y ago

>Now she uses her new-found skills to automate work processes like doing reports, drafting budgets and other repetitive tasks, saving her hours in her day. lol i have been using computers for along time and i still have not done that yet. Rather than lots of repetitive tasks it seems i have to focus on a few tasks that require precision and cannot be automated. Very seldom can i recall ever being in a situation where i would spend hours doing something that could be automated. Also trying to code a program to automate the task would take longer than doing the task. I think i can recall one time 2 months ago needing to check 70 accounts and doing it by hand which took a half hour was way faster than trying to spend hours trying to code a program to do it.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
You don't know what she is doing. Maybe now she can adjust a report to return the figures she wants, for just a week's worth of data or whatever. Most people can benefit by becoming more computer literate.
52-6F-62 7y ago
In my scrappy work environment I have to help set up some subscriber emails on the side of my main production engineering work. We’re short-handed. Every week, sometimes multiple times in a week, I get effort approval emails. For each item in the approvals list I have to file a ticket, filling out the details expressed in the email. Doing this once maybe takes half an hour. Doing it every week, or more often, gets annoying, frustrating, etc. Writing something to take care of it in some spare moments is making the process just that much less of a burden. In short, if you do it only once in a while—sure, not a big deal. If you’re doing that banal half-hour task on the regular and it blocks you from getting something else done that benefits from more attention then the effort expended to automate it makes a lot of sense.
prashnts 7y ago
Automation doesn’t need to be end to end. Consider a case if you need to do an aggregation with pdfs, simple script to read and pull the data points is pretty trivial. You will still need to type the results by hand in excel (for example), but that « automation » just reduced the effort it’d take otherwise.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Huh? pdftotext massage with grep, tr, sed, awk, sort, uniq, etc paste into Calc or Excel (or some SQL first)

Clubber 7y ago

Translation: Singapore's government is failing its elderly generation. A very small percentage are able to keep working and supporting themselves for a few more months / years by learning how to program, in probably the most basic sense. Everyone else is unable to find work but unable to receive retirement benefits that they've paid for during their working years in taxes. This circumstance is due to either corruption or ineptitude, or both. This will probably be a more prominent story in the US soon as well. Save your money as best you can and don't count on governments to fulfill their promises. When I was growing up, the retirement age in the US was 65. Now it's 66 and will soon be 67. By the time I retire, it will probably be higher. It's blamed on the population living longer, yet the average lifespan has been decreasing recently. The government failed (or ignored) the fairly obvious result of modern medicine making people live longer and did not plan for it, and continues to not plan for it other than cutting benefits. How many 66 year old programmers do you know?

chrisco255 7y ago
The average lifespan decreased by something like 0.1 years. It's a slight dip in an otherwise upward trend in life expectancy and it's mostly due to opioid crisis. At any rate, I fully expect social security benefits to be lowered by 2030 as we are approaching an inflection point in expenditures versus S.S. taxes taken in.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Let's make sure social security is around forever, and available for those that actually need it. We can slightly increase taxes and slightly reduce benefits for wealthy people to keep social security working basically forever. I'm fortunate to be a highly compensated engineer. If I'm making say $250k a year, I could pay a little bit more in taxes to help the system be sustainable, and also more likely to be there if I do need it. Taxes for this benefit are capped at $8,240 or 6.2% of salary up to $132,900 [1]. The reason taxes are capped is because benefits are capped. My company could pay a bit more in payroll taxes and they wouldn't care, they'd love to hire 5 more experienced and well compensated engineers like me. There's a similar issue on social security wages - let's say I accumulate $5 million in assets at retirement, I'm going to be earning a pretty good amount of income even when not working, so you could reduce my social security (maybe via extra taxes?). People grumble about that money, "it's mine, I paid for it my whole career" - and you did pay for it in taxes. But things like social security also serve as a crucial part of our weaker societal safety net in America. I want it to be there for people that need it. I probably won't need it in retirement, but most people will. If I do lose all my money, or say I wasn't as lucky in my life and was hurt or not able to accumulate so much wealth, I want it to be there - for me and others. [1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit

nubela 7y ago

As a Singaporean, this is another "feel good" article about Singapore that cherry picks anecdotal examples to paint a false image.

analognoise 7y ago
Could you elaborate? What's the true image?
- mfcl 7y ago
  The true image is that 65-year-olds are not learning how to code.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    > The true image is that 65-year-olds are not learning how to code. The true image is that most 65-year-olds are not learning how to code.
    - epx 7y ago
      If just one leant to code at 65 this is so great to hear about.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        My uncle in his 60's returned to the university to get an advanced degree in vulcanology.
        coldtea 7y ago
        Several people do it, like several people do matchstick Eiffel Towers or have a crocodile as a pet. It's still rare, and in no way anything statistically significant to write home about, nor the "way out" for the serious problem of old people forced to work.
    - 7y ago

imtringued 7y ago

Why does a 65 year old person still have to make a long term investment into their career? Isn't that person going to retire in their 70s or earlier?

WalterBright 7y ago
Most people find fulfillment and purpose by doing useful work. Otherwise retirement can be a living death.
- siquick 7y ago
  Foregoing your retirement to make wealthy shareholders wealthier is not useful work. Community work is where "bored" retirees would be better off putting their focus.
menzoic 7y ago
That's the issue at hand. Singapore's economy can't support retirement in the way you think about it from your country.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  Why can't Singapore's economy support it? Isn't Singapore richer than almost every country that does have some form of public pensions?
  - Temasik 7y ago
    this please answer
cryptozeus 7y ago
Not everyone can..same case in states too

onetimemanytime 7y ago

>> Valerie Yeong-Tan, who’s worked for 47 years at Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., is one such example. Give this woman her pension already. Learning to code cause you want to at 65 is very different from having to....

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

I know many comments were about how the article was a cherry picked example, but I was still glad the example seemed to be a useful one. Honestly, I think even most programmers would benefit from refreshers on how to automate large parts of their workflow (I myself wish I was much more of a sed/awk guru than I am), and how to use the command line and the standard command line tools to get things done. Not to be too harsh but I think it's unrealistic to expect more than a tiny percentage of people who are very late in their careers to learn to be true programmers, but I think most people could learn bot-like automation tools to improve their productivity.

redact207 7y ago

When I worked in Singapore, it was heartbreaking to see how the elderly were forced to take low paying positions clearing tables and being servers at McDonald's. Not because it's "bad" work or anything, but because in their aging years they were forced to due to a social service system that failed them. This is obviously a fluff piece that tries to promote the resilience and motivation of the aging population, yet just highlights how bad things are since people have to work til they die.

mirimir 7y ago
So has Singapore's social services gone bankrupt? Did they just run out of young people to fund it? Edit: OK, OK, I found a 2011 Brookings report that explains it: "Social Policy in Singapore: A Crucible of Individual Responsibility".[0] Basically, social services mandates savings, with more or less self-managed investment, but doesn't guarantee benefits. And it has emphasized home ownership. So no, their system isn't at risk of bankruptcy. But then: > Like the standard criticism of defined-contribution pension plans, the standard criticism of somewhat minimalist social policy such as that which characterises Singapore is that it does not cover enough risks and actual problems faced by the poor, the elderly, and the sick and disabled. As we have seen, European, Scandinavian and North American countries spend around 35% of their GDPs on social programmes. Although a comparable figure on total social welfare spending is not available for Singapore, the Government of Singapore spends only 16.7% of its GDP on all its programmes, a figure that is less than half as much as European and Scandinavian programmes spent just on social welfare. So there we have it: individual responsibility. 0) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/social-policy-in-singapore-a-crucible-of-individual-responsibility/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/social-policy-in-singapor...
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  "Individual responsibility" is code for "privatised profits from essential public services." Which in turn is code for "Heaven help you if you're poor or just plain unlucky."
  - mirimir 7y ago

PorterDuff 7y ago

I'm rather hoping to forget how to code at age 65.

patientplatypus 7y ago

This is the sort of thing that belongs on https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/

golemotron 7y ago

In Asia and Latin America, children support their parents as they age. The West created this dream of individualism where each person had to become entirely self-sufficient through their savings and investments (employer managed or not). It's not surprising that it is more fragile.

Temasik 7y ago
so the elderly in singapore work for free at retirement age?
chillacy 7y ago
Singapore is part of Asia, and has a majority ethnically Chinese population, what does the west have to do with this?
- golemotron 7y ago
  West-ernization.

cylinder 7y ago

I see Americans are now exporting Hustler Porn to Asia.