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Most of the older coders I know tend to focus on niche technologies. Many do embedded systems work, or database design. Specializing is often very lucrative. R

Most of the older coders I know tend to focus on niche technologies. Many do embedded systems work, or database design. Specializing is often very lucrative. Ruby on Rails and PHP programmers are a dime a dozen (no literally they are astonishingly cheap), while a database designer is mid six figures. It is hard to get into those specialties, so naturally they are going to have older participants. I get the feeling that older coders tend to dismiss all the current fads, and are stuck in the fads of 10+ years ago That is a short circuit argument often used by people when they face resistance to unsupported ideas. Several years back I posted several essays critical of the NoSQL euphoria. Being in my 30s, I wasn't surprised to see several argue that it was because I was just too old, man. Only that was a steaming pile of horseshit: My criticism was founded entirely in a knowledgeable, experienced analysis, and not simply brash adoption because something was new and different (an affliction that impacts developers of all ages). The new silver bullet. People see what they want to see, and it's the root of all prejudices.

bunderbunder 14y ago
Several years back I posted several essays critical of the NoSQL euphoria. Being in my 30s, I wasn't surprised to see several argue that it was because I was just too old, man. Only that was a steaming pile of horseshit: My criticism was founded entirely in a knowledgeable, experienced analysis, and not simply brash adoption because something was new and different (an affliction that impacts developers of all ages). The new silver bullet. Reminds me of an experience I recently had. I was in a room full of programmers where the conversation quickly turned into an exchange about newer technologies between a group of mostly up-and-coming Ruby guys (who I'll call 'youngsters' for lack of a better weasel word), and a group of mostly older and established enterprise developers (the 'oldsters'). It was weird to sit on the sidelines and watch the exchange. The oldsters were asking interesting and probing questions about some of the technologies that were popular with the youngsters. Nothing really confrontational. Just a lot of genuine curiosity, tempered with a little bit of cautious skepticism (presumably borne of experience). The youngsters, on the other hand, seemed to be taking all of it rather defensively. And they did a whole lot of question-dodging. Or apparently failing to understand that they failed to understand the question (admittedly I didn't really understand a lot of these questions either - I'm a youngster myself), and giving unsatisfying answers as a result. And generally making me worry that the Dunning-Kruger effect might have been a factor in how the conversation was unfolding. Don't know where I'm going with this, other than to say that it was a rather instructive experience for me.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I've had one entertaining experience at a conference of having my opinion be partially dismissed in-person due to my age - only to have a guy bring up what this "Adrian Howard" dude said on a mailing list to back up my old-dude opinion (I hadn't introduced myself at this point). I guess on the internet nobody knows you're an old dog
bmj 14y ago
Specializing is often very lucrative. Especially if you specialize in an obscure bit ERP/MRP software. Yes, it's not exactly cutting edge, but I know folks who do a minimal amount of consulting each month to maintain these systems, which then allows them ample time to pursue more cutting edge work.
adrianhoward 14y ago
Specializing is often very lucrative Hell yeah. I knew a couple of folk who decided to go into COBOL in a serious way twenty years ago since they saw how the relative numbers of "lines of business critical COBOL" and "number of skilled COBOL developers" were going. They both made out like bandits.
- jakejake 14y ago
  very true. i think there's a feeling with those guys that the work is inevitably dwindling away, but if they can ride the gravy train until retirement then they'll be just fine. It's a bit of a gamble that the work won't run out, leaving them with a skill that's no longer used. Who knows in 20 years that may be the case with Ruby devs, getting paid huge amounts of money to keep ancient systems running!
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    very true. i think there's a feeling with those guys that the work is inevitably dwindling away, but if they can ride the gravy train until retirement then they'll be just fine. It's a bit of a gamble that the work won't run out, leaving them with a skill that's no longer used. Heh. 20 years ago COBOL was seen in the same legacy "nobody uses it" way it is now :-) I guarantee those two would make the same decision again today - and they'd be right. The gravy train is only just getting started. COBOL will not go away in my lifetime. People are still writing new COBOL code - and there are fewer skilled COBOL devs out there. There are millions of lines of business critical COBOL running out there in the world. Usually in businesses that are bright enough to realise that rewriting business critical systems is far more risky than maintaining the existing code (e.g. I was told a few years ago that one particular Large Financial Organisation had taken on an in-house compiler team to reduce the risk of their system becoming unsupportable in the future.)
    - jakejake 14y ago
      Don't get me wrong, I think nothing bad of anybody that works in a niche. I just think of it as possible high risk for possible high reward. I might not even include COBOL because it has such a foothold in certain industries. It's just not a new, sexy language. I myself programmed in Pascal back in the day :-) I was thinking more about some other guys I've ran into. One guy was an expert at this proprietary DB system and slowly would lose clients but somehow always found a new one - charging very high rates. I knew a guy who was quite old when I started and he was an expert with magnetic tape technology! His luck actually did run out, though, his whole department was phased out one day and he had to re-tool (and went into line printers interestingly) It's really hard to say which of them hang on or not, I have some technologies under my own belt that I feel the same about!
jakejake 14y ago
let me know where the dime-a-dozen php coders are all hiding because we have a lot of trouble finding any to hire here in Chicago!

bunderbunder 14y ago

Several years back I posted several essays critical of the NoSQL euphoria. Being in my 30s, I wasn't surprised to see several argue that it was because I was just too old, man. Only that was a steaming pile of horseshit: My criticism was founded entirely in a knowledgeable, experienced analysis, and not simply brash adoption because something was new and different (an affliction that impacts developers of all ages). The new silver bullet. Reminds me of an experience I recently had. I was in a room full of programmers where the conversation quickly turned into an exchange about newer technologies between a group of mostly up-and-coming Ruby guys (who I'll call 'youngsters' for lack of a better weasel word), and a group of mostly older and established enterprise developers (the 'oldsters'). It was weird to sit on the sidelines and watch the exchange. The oldsters were asking interesting and probing questions about some of the technologies that were popular with the youngsters. Nothing really confrontational. Just a lot of genuine curiosity, tempered with a little bit of cautious skepticism (presumably borne of experience). The youngsters, on the other hand, seemed to be taking all of it rather defensively. And they did a whole lot of question-dodging. Or apparently failing to understand that they failed to understand the question (admittedly I didn't really understand a lot of these questions either - I'm a youngster myself), and giving unsatisfying answers as a result. And generally making me worry that the Dunning-Kruger effect might have been a factor in how the conversation was unfolding. Don't know where I'm going with this, other than to say that it was a rather instructive experience for me.

adrianhoward 14y ago
I've had one entertaining experience at a conference of having my opinion be partially dismissed in-person due to my age - only to have a guy bring up what this "Adrian Howard" dude said on a mailing list to back up my old-dude opinion (I hadn't introduced myself at this point). I guess on the internet nobody knows you're an old dog

bmj 14y ago

Specializing is often very lucrative. Especially if you specialize in an obscure bit ERP/MRP software. Yes, it's not exactly cutting edge, but I know folks who do a minimal amount of consulting each month to maintain these systems, which then allows them ample time to pursue more cutting edge work.

adrianhoward 14y ago

Specializing is often very lucrative Hell yeah. I knew a couple of folk who decided to go into COBOL in a serious way twenty years ago since they saw how the relative numbers of "lines of business critical COBOL" and "number of skilled COBOL developers" were going. They both made out like bandits.

jakejake 14y ago
very true. i think there's a feeling with those guys that the work is inevitably dwindling away, but if they can ride the gravy train until retirement then they'll be just fine. It's a bit of a gamble that the work won't run out, leaving them with a skill that's no longer used. Who knows in 20 years that may be the case with Ruby devs, getting paid huge amounts of money to keep ancient systems running!
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  very true. i think there's a feeling with those guys that the work is inevitably dwindling away, but if they can ride the gravy train until retirement then they'll be just fine. It's a bit of a gamble that the work won't run out, leaving them with a skill that's no longer used. Heh. 20 years ago COBOL was seen in the same legacy "nobody uses it" way it is now :-) I guarantee those two would make the same decision again today - and they'd be right. The gravy train is only just getting started. COBOL will not go away in my lifetime. People are still writing new COBOL code - and there are fewer skilled COBOL devs out there. There are millions of lines of business critical COBOL running out there in the world. Usually in businesses that are bright enough to realise that rewriting business critical systems is far more risky than maintaining the existing code (e.g. I was told a few years ago that one particular Large Financial Organisation had taken on an in-house compiler team to reduce the risk of their system becoming unsupportable in the future.)
  - jakejake 14y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I think nothing bad of anybody that works in a niche. I just think of it as possible high risk for possible high reward. I might not even include COBOL because it has such a foothold in certain industries. It's just not a new, sexy language. I myself programmed in Pascal back in the day :-) I was thinking more about some other guys I've ran into. One guy was an expert at this proprietary DB system and slowly would lose clients but somehow always found a new one - charging very high rates. I knew a guy who was quite old when I started and he was an expert with magnetic tape technology! His luck actually did run out, though, his whole department was phased out one day and he had to re-tool (and went into line printers interestingly) It's really hard to say which of them hang on or not, I have some technologies under my own belt that I feel the same about!

jakejake 14y ago

let me know where the dime-a-dozen php coders are all hiding because we have a lot of trouble finding any to hire here in Chicago!