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There are certainly older devs who only know $thing and can be kind of myopic, but this works the other way too: there are also young devs who only know $thing

There are certainly older devs who only know $thing and can be kind of myopic, but this works the other way too: there are also young devs who only know $thing and are rather myopic. Another thing I've seen is people complaining about "old geezer not keeping up" is used to shut down conversation about whether $new_fad is really the best choice, and $old_thing may actually be better. Not saying that was your intent, but I've seen it used like this many times. Not all that many years ago someone saying "no thanks, I'll stick with SQL instead of no-SQL" and even "no thanks, I'll stick with Java because I think the static typing is better" could be seen as "not keeping up".

cogman10 4y ago
> There are certainly older devs who only know $thing and can be kind of myopic, but this works the other way too: there are also young devs who only know $thing and are rather myopic. This is why I tried not to classify this as a young v old thing. I don't think it's the case that old devs can't keep up. I think it's the case that some devs don't keep up regardless of age. For young devs, it's hard to know if that's the case or if it's simply inexperience. For old devs, it's far more glaring when all their experience is with VB6. I think that's where a lot of the ageism in software hiring practices comes from. > Not all that many years ago someone saying "no thanks, I'll stick with SQL instead of no-SQL" and even "no thanks, I'll stick with Java because I think the static typing is better" could be seen as "not keeping up". Perhaps some saw it that way. I never did. I would say that if you were completely unfamiliar with no-SQL, you likely weren't keeping up. Just like if you aren't aware of k8s or docker today, you aren't keeping up. Whether or not you chose to use those techs is entirely different from simply outright rejecting them without evaluation.

cogman10 4y ago

> There are certainly older devs who only know $thing and can be kind of myopic, but this works the other way too: there are also young devs who only know $thing and are rather myopic. This is why I tried not to classify this as a young v old thing. I don't think it's the case that old devs can't keep up. I think it's the case that some devs don't keep up regardless of age. For young devs, it's hard to know if that's the case or if it's simply inexperience. For old devs, it's far more glaring when all their experience is with VB6. I think that's where a lot of the ageism in software hiring practices comes from. > Not all that many years ago someone saying "no thanks, I'll stick with SQL instead of no-SQL" and even "no thanks, I'll stick with Java because I think the static typing is better" could be seen as "not keeping up". Perhaps some saw it that way. I never did. I would say that if you were completely unfamiliar with no-SQL, you likely weren't keeping up. Just like if you aren't aware of k8s or docker today, you aren't keeping up. Whether or not you chose to use those techs is entirely different from simply outright rejecting them without evaluation.