3 ms·

The problem is that older folks are very few and far between. You're right about shipping I think. My experience is only anecdotal, but older people, for me, h

by maybird 14y ago

The problem is that older folks are very few and far between. You're right about shipping I think. My experience is only anecdotal, but older people, for me, have been the difference between shipping and floundering.

tjic 14y ago
I was thinking the other day "if I wanted to market myself as a 40 year old RoR contractor, what's my one paragraph description / resume / pitch". It boiled down to: After 20 years of experience at startups, my key skill is simple : I GOD DAMN SHIP WORKING CODE. I'm up on some of the latest technologies, and not up on others, but if you want someone to take a half-assed project that's over schedule and over budget, get it cleaned up, made working, made maintainable, debugged, and DEPLOYED - with every little quirky bit that separates 'mostly done' from 'actually done', then I'm your man.
- tjic 14y ago
  A further thought: PG talks about Blub languages and Blub programmers (in both cases, those at level X can look down at level X-3 and see what it's missing, but those at level X-3 look up at level X and just thing "WT*?"). I think that there's an aspect to software engineering that is not captured under the word "programmer", and there are Blub people in this as well: people who know how to get projects finished, maintainable, and deployed understand how the Blub folks fail, but the Blub folks don't understand everything the old farts do, and think that most of it just looks stupid or stick-in-the-mud-ish.
  - batista 14y ago
    >A further thought: PG talks about Blub languages and Blub programmers (in both cases, those at level X can look down at level X-3 and see what it's missing, but those at level X-3 look up at level X and just thing "WT?").* Which I find mostly a Blub observation. Yes, some languages have some more features than others. In any case the benefits are marginal compared to: their libraries, the general ecosystem (programmers, jobs, books, etc), stable, fitness for the job etc. It's not like anybody will be more proficient writing a kernel or a 3D FPS in Lisp, just because it has garbage collection and C lacks it. Actually, C will be better suited for the kernel job PRECISELY because it lacks garbage collection. And if you are in rural Romania, you'd be better of with CodeIgniter for your brochure-style web design firm, than with Snap, that is if you want to have a team with more than one programmer in it.
deleted 14y ago
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by maybird 14y ago

tjic 14y ago

I was thinking the other day "if I wanted to market myself as a 40 year old RoR contractor, what's my one paragraph description / resume / pitch". It boiled down to: After 20 years of experience at startups, my key skill is simple : I GOD DAMN SHIP WORKING CODE. I'm up on some of the latest technologies, and not up on others, but if you want someone to take a half-assed project that's over schedule and over budget, get it cleaned up, made working, made maintainable, debugged, and DEPLOYED - with every little quirky bit that separates 'mostly done' from 'actually done', then I'm your man.

tjic 14y ago
A further thought: PG talks about Blub languages and Blub programmers (in both cases, those at level X can look down at level X-3 and see what it's missing, but those at level X-3 look up at level X and just thing "WT*?"). I think that there's an aspect to software engineering that is not captured under the word "programmer", and there are Blub people in this as well: people who know how to get projects finished, maintainable, and deployed understand how the Blub folks fail, but the Blub folks don't understand everything the old farts do, and think that most of it just looks stupid or stick-in-the-mud-ish.
- batista 14y ago
  >A further thought: PG talks about Blub languages and Blub programmers (in both cases, those at level X can look down at level X-3 and see what it's missing, but those at level X-3 look up at level X and just thing "WT?").* Which I find mostly a Blub observation. Yes, some languages have some more features than others. In any case the benefits are marginal compared to: their libraries, the general ecosystem (programmers, jobs, books, etc), stable, fitness for the job etc. It's not like anybody will be more proficient writing a kernel or a 3D FPS in Lisp, just because it has garbage collection and C lacks it. Actually, C will be better suited for the kernel job PRECISELY because it lacks garbage collection. And if you are in rural Romania, you'd be better of with CodeIgniter for your brochure-style web design firm, than with Snap, that is if you want to have a team with more than one programmer in it.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]