11 ms·

The Aging Programmer [video]

237 points by belter 2y ago

skirmish 2y ago
Meanwhile The Economist says [1]: "In a way, those over the age of 55 but under the age of 75—roughly speaking, the baby-boomers and some of what is referred to as “Generation X”—are the new problem generation. <...> Whereas young people in rich countries these days are addicted to their phones, more anxious than previous generations and far less likely than them to use mind-altering substances or to party recklessly, their grandparents belong to a generation that experimented with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. As they reach older age, they are not giving up their old habits." [1] https://www.economist.com/international/2025/01/02/why-people-over-the-age-of-55-are-the-new-problem-generation https://www.economist.com/international/2025/01/02/why-peopl... , https://archive.is/dkxot https://archive.is/dkxot
zug_zug 2y ago
Looks to be 100% about aging, but I don't see anything specific to programming
- belter 2y ago
  So you have nothing to worry about....
- monsieurgaufre 2y ago
  We're lucking that aging has not impact on programming, then.
  - paganel 2y ago
    I'm not yet 50, I'm "only" in my mid-40s, but for sure advancing in age has had an effect on the way I program code. For sure I won't be able to spend long hours in the night trying to decipher/solve a specific programming problem, I used to do that when I was younger. I also used to type a lot more code, as in, my fingers used to type a lot more, I can't physically afford to do that now because after a certain threshold I can feel it in my fingers, and that feeling is not good. I'd say that even my capability to stay focused on a specific issue has kind of changed, but maybe that's just a me thing, related to my specific life choices/environment, I couldn't tell, maybe some other programmers who have the same age as I do are better at keeping focused, or at least as good as they were 15-20 years ago.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      I think I write much less code now to solve a given problem, largely due to a few decades of YAGNI experience. Gee, I could build this infinitely flexible inner system to solve this whole class of problems, or I could just write some code to concretely solve today’s problem, and keep it loosely coupled enough that we can replace it wholesale later if we need to. That, plus a healthy dose of “good enough”, along with a whole lot of “I’ve written this 5 times already” lets me get easily maintainable stuff out the door more quickly than when I started. If I were hiring, I’d vastly prefer current me to younger me.
    - digging 2y ago
      Being only in my 30s but also affected by a lot of usually-age-related disability has been a big struggle for me as a programmer. I don't know how typical it actually is, but I guess I skipped the "work way too hard because your body can handle it" phase that appears to build reputation and wealth early in a career. Probably it would have been different if I'd grown up more physically active; I basically hate most sports and other ways of staying healthy and didn't learn their value until it started getting in the way of the things I do love. Regardless, it's a massive toll on my mental health. Although frequently assured otherwise, I constantly feel like a burden on my team, like I'm unreliable, for being unable to put in the same hours my older coworkers do. As difficult as it is to start now, focusing on developing my physical health is the only way forward.
    - neilv 2y ago
      It really varies by person and circumstances, and there's also things you can do (analogous to when someone with aches starts lifting weights, and gets in the best shape of their life). Late nights are often a bad idea anyway. Though I literally just finished a successful all-nighter about an hour ago, I try not to make a habit of it. And there's a ton of things we know how to do, so that most all-nighters never need to happen. Regarding typing, it might not be a "this is my life now" thing you just have to accept and work with, but there might be some practice/nuance or environmental factor that you can change for big wins. You can look into typing/workstation ergonomics, and experiment with the many variables, to see what works for you. I had to do that in my late teens, when most of our development team on a stressful project developed hand pain and worse, and learned what worked for me. Now I can type all day and night without problem. Having that known-good baseline means that I soon know when I start doing something that doesn't work for me. (Last time was a few years ago, when I started using a laptop with a numeric keypad at a startup, and hand started hurting. I think probably because hands had to twist badly for the way I was balancing the laptop with the off-center main keyboard. So I switched that work to a laptop without an off-center keyboard, and problem disappeared.)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    I'm 61 and I'm definitely aware that by many metrics I am a worse programmer than I was 10 years ago. By some other metrics, I'm better, and I could still run circles around most younger programmers in terms of architecture/system design. But it absolutely has an impact.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Lucky employer then.
emmanueloga_ 2y ago
Slides: https://github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_Slides/blob/main/2024/Kate%20Gregory/The%20Aging%20Programmer.pdf https://github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_Slides/blob/main/2024/K...
- Animats 2y ago
  Oh, thanks. The video is an hour long. Slide deck is two minutes. Standard advice on aging. Not programmer specific.
  - edgarischatting 2y ago
    I really enjoyed the extra 58 minutes from her talk though, she didnt just read from the slides the added a lot of extra context.
willm 2y ago
Very general advice, but as a 50 year old developer I needed to read this.
ddellacosta 2y ago
I appreciated this. Lots of solid advice and positive and pragmatic thinking here about aging in the context of being a programmer, and more generally too. I'll take this opportunity to make a related pitch regarding back pain in particular, which can become more of a problem if you are sedentary as so many programmers are: if you have chronic back issues you owe it to yourself to at least check out Stuart McGill's Back Mechanic (https://www.backfitpro.com/books/back-mechanic-the-mcgill-method-to-fix-back-pain/ https://www.backfitpro.com/books/back-mechanic-the-mcgill-me...). It's very much in line with this post; in particular the idea that you just have to deal with back pain as a fact of life is--for most people--not the case. Please take a look if you are struggling with back pain. The process he lays out takes work but it's based on solid research and experience and it has helped me tremendously.
- kbbgl87 2y ago
  Just got that book yesterday because I've been struggling with managing my back pain. Hopefully it'll help mitigate it.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility. I am so hypermobile that none of the traditional ergonomics techniques, including physical therapy, work well enough and I have resorted to using a reclining chair. The reclining chair has worked out great and I really wish I had tried it much sooner. I had not considered it earlier because all of the advice I had received was that it was damaging.
  - dtdynasty 2y ago
    > Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility. This does not seem intuitive to me. Why would this be the case?
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      I noticed it in general observationally and later found a generic explanation for it. I used to do behavioral analytics and noticed that programmers tend to have a distinct clustering of behaviors. I’m pretty sure it’s the TNXB gene, it’s been overlooked because it’s traditionally hard to sequence but modern sequencing 30x or long reads can find SNPs here. A colleague who has the same rare set of behaviors and interest as me and is also hyper-mobile had found that he has a TNXB SNP combination that should by random chance only occur in 1/10K people, I subsequently did a DNA test and found that I too had the same SNPs. I have since collected more samples from friends and colleagues who are world class in their fields and so far 5 of 5 have had the same TNXB SNPs. It also appears that in reality this combination is much more common than random chance due to sexual selection which should underscore how behaviorally impactful it is. Hyper mobility is considered a spectrum and a theory that I’m yet to prove is that the spectrum is almost entirely down to the number and type of TNXB SNPs. And it appears that people on this spectrum are more likely to be programmers. Consider the over representation of transgenderism in programming. That same over representation exists in hyper-mobility and I would suggest this is due to a common cause.
oytis 2y ago
There is some good advice, but the way she assumes old people have a lot of money, costs go down because of accumulation of assetes and salaries rise faster than inflation, might not be transferable to everyone in all geographies and generations (only read the slides)
- valbaca 2y ago
  She spends a long time at the beginning of the talk going over all kinds of caveats and disclaimers. It's honestly annoying how much effort people have to put into saying "this won't work for everyone in every situation, all the time" and STILL someone chimes in "UMMMACTUALLY!" who didn't even watch the talk
- carschno 2y ago
  Indeed. That partly seems to be based on the advice to build (save/invest) money while you are younger, which seems a bit contradictory. I suppose everything is easier when you are rich, including ageing.
  - psunavy03 2y ago
    It's not contradictory at all. As Einstein said, "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe."
    - oldpersonintx 2y ago
      [dead]
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    The current crop of old people had money when interest rates started high and ended low, which is far better than the opposite of starting low and ending high. There is a lower bound for interest rates and there is a risk component to the rate, especially for regular borrowers. Now consider that during the period of lowering interest rates the risk temporarily dips lower because in general all asset holders are making money. This doesn’t happen if the interest rates merely stay still, in time the risk component will increase and the rate at which people can borrow will increase along with it. I’m not sure what the takeaway should be from this, dysfunctions can last longer than people’s lifetimes so it’s not always a sure bet to bet against it. My prediction which I’ve held for a long time is that the economic dysfunction will create civil unrest. The increase of security cost will undermine profitability impares the ability for asserts to maintain their high values and this will trigger a downturn. It does appear to me that we are in the early stages of civil unrest.
keybored 2y ago
I haven’t seen the submission (video) but I need to shift from my focus from "this is just what it is now" to dealing with problems head-on and mitigating. Also absorbing experiences and knowledge from people who have been where I am at. "This is just how it is now" (you know the refrain) becomes a self-fulfilling phrophecy. Could most problems simply be avoided and mitigated until a long time in the future? I don’t know yet. I don’t have the glass half full attitude yet. Right now it’s mostly "I guess this is just how it is now for me rest of my life." That’s more like my current mindset.
- scotty79 2y ago
  What I learned so far, at 45, is that you can't rely on your body retaining capabilities just from you not being completely sedentary, as it was the case for me before. You get to keep only the abilities, movements that you actively use in daily (or perhaps weekly) life. For example if you don't squat you'll gradually lose ability to squat even if you run a mile every day. If you don't jump, or jump down regularly you'll lose that ability too. I think it's a good idea to enrich your environment so that you are forced to do the things you'd like to retain. For example sleep on the mattress on the floor to get up from floor level every day. Another idea is barefoot shoes so you don't lose stability and active amortization your feet should provide. If you live in a house with multiple floors and bathrooms always use bathroom on another floor. What's infeasible to implement you'll need to supplant with regular intentional exercise like hip abductions.
  - keybored 2y ago
    I listened through Move Your DNA last year (biomechanics) so this makes a lot of sense. On the whole it doesn’t seem that bad, at least this aspect. We just need to do better than sitting for 12+ hours. And I like movement. Not being lethargic. Some things (out of the deluge of information from everywhere) discourage me, like learning that you have been drinking water wrong your whole life or whatever microhabit is ruining your life this week. But I was and am mostly optimistic about the biomechanics stuff. Because there is a ton of potential to do better considering that even athletes can be habitual oversitters. Thanks.
waffletower 2y ago
I don't see the words "standing desk" together in the comments yet. I am using one at the moment and later today I will be sitting. It is important to alternate lest you create new issues IMO.
- edgarischatting 2y ago
  Im 34. I've used a permanent standing desk for 5 years, along with monitors at a proper height, an ErgoDox EZ keyboard, and a standing pad. I havent experienced any issues so far, what issues could this create for me? I find that if I sit I end up having lower back pain, my legs end up getting tingly after a while, and I just get sleepy if I'm too comfortable. Do I actually need to force myself to sit? I'm moderately fit/athletic, standing has helped me with back pain and neck pains.
- twh270 2y ago
  Yes, 100%. Being immobile is bad, whether you're standing, sitting, or lying down. (Too much strain from movement is bad too, hence RSI for many of us.) I really enjoy having the flexibility/option of standing or sitting, and IMO a standing desk is one of those purchases that has a 10x payback.
- 0x5f3759df-i 2y ago
  And if you really want to up your game a treadmill desk has been an amazing upgrade. If I just live my typical WFH life I am usually hitting a dismal 2k steps a day. Doing two 45 min to an hour work sessions walking at the treadmill desk had me hitting 10k steps without having to devote any special extra time in my day to exercise.
  - pc86 2y ago
    Do you find it's difficult/impossible to type with a treadmill desk setup? That's my largest concern. Even when I'm not coding I spend a decent amount of time doing PRs, Slack, etc.
    - 0x5f3759df-i 2y ago
danbmil 2y ago
My peak programming skills are close to what they were 30 years ago, but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods as I once could. I feel like a pinch hitter: I can do a couple innings at a high level of performance, but I can't keep that level up as long as I used to. OTOH I think I have better judgement when it comes to deep, complex questions of long-term architecture choices. My "meta-programming" skills are sharper than ever.
- Kokouane 2y ago
  > but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods as I once could. This scares me. I'm younger and thus, I feel like social media and short form content has had so much impact on my ability to focus that it already feels bad where it is right now. Never thought this might be the peak of my concentration power though.
  - wonger_ 2y ago
    I've felt the same. I started reading books again though, and I felt a small improvement in my ability to concentrate. Digital detoxing helps too.
  - amatecha 2y ago
    I'm 40 and as far as I can tell, I can concentrate just as well now as I did when I was 20. I'm also pretty deliberate with what I do in life, I don't engage in "mass social media" like FB/Twitter/etc. , I don't use YouTube, Tiktok, etc.. .. I mean, I will view something if someone sends a link, but I don't "browse" stuff (partly because browsing literally anything feels like I'm being manipulated and I'm pretty sensitive to that). Sometimes I see someone using a modern social media app like FB, IG or whatever, and I cannot imagine that months and years of this kind of "scrolling endlessly, pausing on things that grab your attention, then resuming" is healthy for one's consciousness or focus. I think the summary is, I live my life the same way I did in 1999 or whatever, as I've found that works for me, and I have to basically actively reject what modern society tries to manipulate me into living like. (btw this is hard to do, EVERYONE and EVERYTHING wants me to be paying attention to millions of disparate trivial things, it's a literal nonstop battle...)
svilen_dobrev 2y ago
interesting. i am 55-ish. "change is the only constant in universe" - whoever said that. For a change, i went long-distance bikepacking 5y ago. 500-1000-1500kms. Then, Learned to e-foil 2y ago.. took me weeks if not months to get the balance right. (While some kid i taught on the beach, needed 25 mins :/) 7000km so far. Traumas not counted - but hey i am (even more) alive. Today seawater was 8'C.. so what. The other day decided to (finally) learn Go.. did the tour mostly, then, what, just read the spec top to bottom (it's short, has interesting recent changes in scope of for-vars). A nice little language as they frame it. (Maybe 25th or 35th programming language i learn. stopped counting long ago) But.. Cannot be bothered to LLMize meself. And Maybe connected, it seems hard to find a (proper) job recently. esp. if excluding some things on ethical grounds.. Which brings cynicism - as described in the article. But yeah. Better Live now. Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery.. have fun
- fritzo 2y ago
  I haven't tried e-foil, but did I thoroughly enjoy learning to balance on a racing stand up paddle board last summer (only 23" wide). It took me many hilariously humbling weeks of constantly falling off before I could stay up for any distance. I loved feeling inept and awkward but with only benign consequences: failure means a mere dunk in warm water.
tonymet 2y ago
The host is clearly in poor physical condition and many of their concerns are due to lack of proper nutrition , exercise and prescription meds abuse. They appear 15 years older than they should be. Their advice is primarily reactive, and the trivial proactive advice (exercise more) is delivered almost ironically. Take care of yourself now. Drop the weight, get generous activity, get off the meds and you will feel loads better.
- troyvit 2y ago
  If you skim the transcript you'll see stuff like this: > [...] a big part of what I want to talk about is things you can do in your 20s in your 30s in your 40s in your 50s that lead towards you being able to do what you want which could be nothing or could be programming in your 60s in your 70s uh in your 80s [...] Further in she says: > it's really astonishing the minute you have proof, visual proof to strangers that your body doesn't quite work people assume your mind doesn't quite work. To her point, she's 63. We have no idea what she's seen in her life, what sacrifices she's had to make to get where she is today, or anything. What I see is that she is doing more about it now than most of us in this thread, and it might pay to look past her "poor physical condition" to see what she is conveying.
  - tonymet 2y ago
    physical appearance is one of the most informative indicators of health.
    - text0404 2y ago
      this is easily falsifiable, since many diseases are internal: heart disease, low/high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer. also, most mental health issues do not present external indicators. bruce lee was at peak physical performance when he dropped dead. you could smoke cigarettes and take adderall nonstop and still look "healthy".
      - edgarischatting 2y ago
cloverich 2y ago
One thing I've struggled with, that is very personality dependent, is being assertive around younger, sharper programmers. It can be an odd dynamic, where I may work with people smarter and faster but less experienced than myself. It can become difficult depending on the dynamics to push for the best choices in architecture, libraries, etc, when it is something they don't want to do, if you are not explicitly their senior. More naturally confident and assertive programmers will not have this issue. This is particularly problematic when pushing for restraint. For example, choosing a more well supported and stable UI library for an internal tool, vs using one with e.g. more components or more customization. Its hard to sell that there's no money in fancy internal tools, and a limited set of UI that works well and requires little or no support and even less cognitive load, and just working with those constraints, can result in a net benefit long term. Especially when someone that is sharp and fast can bang out working solutions very quickly. Then three years on the tool is only growing, and the complexity is high, re-usability is low, each page is its own snowflake, and someone has to maintain it. The cost suddenly becomes that of an FTE, for a tool that's only occasionally used, which is astronomically cost ineffective. I told you so is worse than worthless because it solves nothing and only burns bridges. You just deal with the outcome and know you should have pushed harder, perhaps even put your job on the line. Tough to do for trivial matters. I think people that excel as aging programmers figure out how to deal with this well, whether through being more assertive, more convincing, more officially senior, or perhaps even more selective about the situations they get themselves into. I guess what's not surprising is that you can work in this career so long, continually on "the same stuff", and yet the patterns and opportunities can provide interesting new problems to solve, not always the ones you thought needed solving.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  > know you should have pushed harder, perhaps even put your job on the line If you are not the ultimate decision-maker, it is not your fault what decision was made. If you are going out of your way to point out the flaws and issues you anticipate, you are doing everything you need and, indeed, everything you reasonably can.
basfo 2y ago
I don't see a problem with my programming skills, but with my ability to play the corporate game. Probably because i have a lot of experience, i kind of know when a manager wants to push a team too much because he wants to play some game of thrones with another manager. I know when they decide to ignore all warnings to get to a deadline, and then when everything explodes they blame someone else. I know when someone has no idea on what he is doing but has too much power. I know when they are demanding world class results on half the time and a tenth of the resources any serious company would dedicate to the effort. Today you have this "go fast, break things" mentality, which sounds cool and "based", but justifies breaking any rule of software engineering (who has time to write test, amirite?). And now with IA, is even worse, any manager thinks they can rewrite their stack because they got "hello world" running on localhost. Maybe i'm getting old...
- daxfohl 2y ago
  Yup, or EM pitches the big five year vision rearchitecture because that's what builds their empire, even though a cron job that takes a couple days to write would solve the business need.
  - daxfohl 2y ago
    And you know that you'll come back in five years and nothing will have changed, except five new services that do half of what the vision required, most systems still depend on what was originally there, the team has tripled in size and most of them are just there to maintain the workarounds of the half-implemented systems, latency, cost, storage, and bug count are all way up, and no new functionality has been built that the original cron job couldn't have handled.
- hintymad 2y ago
  > Today you have this "go fast, break things" mentality Not in most of the big tech companies, even in the bay area. It's amazing that the bay area companies have managed to grow themselves into giant bureaucratic organizations and they console themselves with bullshit like slow is fast.
ok123456 2y ago
How is BMI racist?
- mythrwy 2y ago
  Is being overweight healthy for any race? If not, it's probably not a great idea to suggest that it is for the members of the protected race. In fact that seems a bit racist itself.
- philk10 2y ago
  One example of many - https://www.henryford.com/blog/2023/11/how-bmi-is-flawed-and-race-gender-and-age-based https://www.henryford.com/blog/2023/11/how-bmi-is-flawed-and...
  - theultdev 2y ago
    It's in the title, but that article lists no reasons why it's racist. They try to relate it to socioeconomic status, but BMI is applied to poor white people as well. I don't buy that reasoning on face value though, it's perfectly affordable to eat healthy. These days fast food and processed foods are much more expensive than buying fresh groceries. Just a trash article trying to normalize obesity and race-bait.
    - philk10 2y ago
      yeh, the poor neighborhoods are full of grocery stores with fresh food and not food deserts AMA any better as a source? https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fetishizes-white-embodiment-and-racializes-fat-phobia/2023-07 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fet...
      - cloverich 2y ago
        > "food deserts", low-income census tracts that are more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas. One mile. That's absurdly narrow. They are tailoring the definitions to meet the resultant behavior. You can grocery shop once every two weeks or less and be healthier than the average American by eating some of the cheapest possible foods, such as rice, beans, and cabbage, carrots, pasta... as an upper income individual I feed my kids this stuff all the time, its dirt cheap and they (we) are happy to eat it. There's serious problems to be dealt with in the US with respect to lower income support, but IMHO food related ones are mostly cultural / educational, not "lives 2 miles from super market, impossible to eat healthy now".
froh 2y ago
slightly more recent, slightly expanded version of the same talk, with link to slides: https://youtu.be/LArOT95LTJU?si=o100t7URZKOLfoFR https://youtu.be/LArOT95LTJU?si=o100t7URZKOLfoFR
hintymad 2y ago
Lots of interesting personal stories and anecdotes in the comments. I was wondering what the average case would be, though, as I don't think many people, myself included, will be far from the average. Indeed, the video cautioned us in the Disclaimer section at the minute 1:24 and quoted the famous WWII story on survival bias.
amatecha 2y ago
Additional instance of this presentation put on by the same speaker at another conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArOT95LTJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArOT95LTJU
pxc 2y ago
I'm a software engineer maybe half the age of the speaker, probably less. But I am already gradually going blind. (No one knows whether I'll reach legal blindness in 5 years or 25, but its presence in my future is a certainty.) It's striking, if not surprising, how relatable this talk is to me. My biggest difficulties are with contrast and brightness, and it's clear that dropping night driving will be the first major life change required by my degrading vision. Many-- maybe even most-- of the compensatory measures the speaker suggests for dealing with vision loss are already part of my life. For me, these similarities and others feel very natural and very right, even a little comforting. My eye disease is genetic, with no treatments and no cure, and so part of what it has taught and reminded me is that bodies fail, and the terms of when and how they fail isn't up to us. One of the things I really like about this talk is how unsentimental it is (without being cold, either). Disability isn't a question of if but of when and how-- and that's not a tragic thing any more than the abstract fact of death, either-- it's just a part of nature, of life. I like this talk because it reminds us that aging, injury, disability, and adapting to those things (individually and collectively) are common threads in human lives. They're something we should know to expect. We may not be fully in control, but we can prepare-- prepare ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our governments, our cities and towns and neighborhoods-- to accommodate the inevitability of various shades and varieties of disability in ourselves and the people around us. Embracing an awareness of the universality of disability can ground us even in the face of bodily changes that frighten and grieve us. We can know they're not the end of the world because they've always been part of the world around us. This talk may be worth a watch even if you think it's not really about you. :)
- PunchTornado 2y ago
  Good luck. Hope your sight will hold until they discover a cure.
aaroninsf 2y ago
I'm a better and faster programmer than I've ever been, though I'm probably un-hirable anywhere that filters by age (almost everywhere). My problem in my role atm is not skill, it's the competition for bandwidth both inside the role, and outside it (i.e. that I have a life consistent with my age, which has a lot of moving parts itself). 22-year-old-me worked past midnight, but 22-year-old-me sometimes had to because they couldn't draw boundaries, manage scope, manage time, etc. I was smart then too but had fewer hacks burned into memory. I rarely do late nights now, not because I don't want to—tearing myself away remains excrutiating—but because I can't. Not because of ability, though I'm sure that's diminished objectivley; but because I have responsibilities which don't mesh with no-sleep or being cranky from lack of it.
- gosub100 2y ago
  I've been a developer for 19 years and never been asked or hinted to "work past midnight". Maybe I'm the outlier, but from my perspective I think your experiences are unusual.
kmoser 2y ago
Lots of good advice, especially for younger people for whom it can pay increasing dividends because they're starting earlier. I have a small quibble about the idea of knowing when you're thirsty. Many people either don't realize when they need to drink more, or actively avoid drinking because they don't want to have to go to the bathroom more frequently. As a result, they are underhydrated and their overall health suffers. (This is largely based on my observations, not any studies, but it was confirmed to me by a PT who encourages people to hydrate more.) So while it may not be necessary to set a timer and drink a liter of water every couple of hours, simply thinking "I'm in touch with my body and I don't feel thirsty" may be a product of deluded wishful thinking. Also she mentioned around the 50 minute mark that "brain games" don't actually help you get better at anything except those brain games, but doing activities you like such as reading are helpful overall. What makes one mental activity more helpful than another? Most programmers tend to like brain games, so you'd figure any mental exercises are better than none, especially if you do different ones.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  I think the point is that (over?) paying for 'brain' games is a waste unless you're doing it solely for leisure.
HL33tibCe7 2y ago
I was enjoying this, but then reached a point where the speaker said > BMI is just nonsense, and not only that, it’s almost certainly racist nonsense […] it has been shown to be healthier in the group they call overweight than the group they call normal Which makes me doubt the veracity of other claims made, to say the least
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Yes, it is not necessarily a racist view to assume that people who look different have more in common than not. If American doctors conduct research on a group of people within their own demographics, and that does not apply to all of humanity for some unknown reason, that doesn't mean they are racists. It's a vague guideline anyway with many exceptions such as bodybuilders and people with unusual proportions.
  - valbaca 2y ago
    You're equating white with American. > BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      America is a predominantly white country, despite the fact it is one of the least racist and least homogeneous ones in the world. >BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations. This quote you provided proves my point. If there is an inherent bias in choosing from your own population, that doesn't make the study racist. If the study was Chinese and therefore didn't apply perfectly to Americans, that wouldn't make the focus on Chinese people a sign of racism. By the way, affinity for your own group is encouraged in every case except for white people. Other groups aren't so stupid as to hate the homogeneity of their homeland. Go live in a more racially uniform country in Asia or Africa and see how much they care about diversity. They want the opposite.
- valbaca 2y ago
  Take a cursory look into BMI. It's completely BS. Goes right into the same bin as the food pyramid and the taste-zones of the tongue.
black_13 2y ago
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237 points by belter 2y ago

Meanwhile The Economist says [1]: "In a way, those over the age of 55 but under the age of 75—roughly speaking, the baby-boomers and some of what is referred to as “Generation X”—are the new problem generation. <...> Whereas young people in rich countries these days are addicted to their phones, more anxious than previous generations and far less likely than them to use mind-altering substances or to party recklessly, their grandparents belong to a generation that experimented with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. As they reach older age, they are not giving up their old habits." [1] https://www.economist.com/international/2025/01/02/why-people-over-the-age-of-55-are-the-new-problem-generation https://www.economist.com/international/2025/01/02/why-peopl... , https://archive.is/dkxot https://archive.is/dkxot

zug_zug 2y ago

Looks to be 100% about aging, but I don't see anything specific to programming

belter 2y ago
So you have nothing to worry about....
monsieurgaufre 2y ago
We're lucking that aging has not impact on programming, then.
- paganel 2y ago
  I'm not yet 50, I'm "only" in my mid-40s, but for sure advancing in age has had an effect on the way I program code. For sure I won't be able to spend long hours in the night trying to decipher/solve a specific programming problem, I used to do that when I was younger. I also used to type a lot more code, as in, my fingers used to type a lot more, I can't physically afford to do that now because after a certain threshold I can feel it in my fingers, and that feeling is not good. I'd say that even my capability to stay focused on a specific issue has kind of changed, but maybe that's just a me thing, related to my specific life choices/environment, I couldn't tell, maybe some other programmers who have the same age as I do are better at keeping focused, or at least as good as they were 15-20 years ago.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I think I write much less code now to solve a given problem, largely due to a few decades of YAGNI experience. Gee, I could build this infinitely flexible inner system to solve this whole class of problems, or I could just write some code to concretely solve today’s problem, and keep it loosely coupled enough that we can replace it wholesale later if we need to. That, plus a healthy dose of “good enough”, along with a whole lot of “I’ve written this 5 times already” lets me get easily maintainable stuff out the door more quickly than when I started. If I were hiring, I’d vastly prefer current me to younger me.
  - digging 2y ago
    Being only in my 30s but also affected by a lot of usually-age-related disability has been a big struggle for me as a programmer. I don't know how typical it actually is, but I guess I skipped the "work way too hard because your body can handle it" phase that appears to build reputation and wealth early in a career. Probably it would have been different if I'd grown up more physically active; I basically hate most sports and other ways of staying healthy and didn't learn their value until it started getting in the way of the things I do love. Regardless, it's a massive toll on my mental health. Although frequently assured otherwise, I constantly feel like a burden on my team, like I'm unreliable, for being unable to put in the same hours my older coworkers do. As difficult as it is to start now, focusing on developing my physical health is the only way forward.
  - neilv 2y ago
    It really varies by person and circumstances, and there's also things you can do (analogous to when someone with aches starts lifting weights, and gets in the best shape of their life). Late nights are often a bad idea anyway. Though I literally just finished a successful all-nighter about an hour ago, I try not to make a habit of it. And there's a ton of things we know how to do, so that most all-nighters never need to happen. Regarding typing, it might not be a "this is my life now" thing you just have to accept and work with, but there might be some practice/nuance or environmental factor that you can change for big wins. You can look into typing/workstation ergonomics, and experiment with the many variables, to see what works for you. I had to do that in my late teens, when most of our development team on a stressful project developed hand pain and worse, and learned what worked for me. Now I can type all day and night without problem. Having that known-good baseline means that I soon know when I start doing something that doesn't work for me. (Last time was a few years ago, when I started using a laptop with a numeric keypad at a startup, and hand started hurting. I think probably because hands had to twist badly for the way I was balancing the laptop with the off-center main keyboard. So I switched that work to a laptop without an off-center keyboard, and problem disappeared.)
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  I'm 61 and I'm definitely aware that by many metrics I am a worse programmer than I was 10 years ago. By some other metrics, I'm better, and I could still run circles around most younger programmers in terms of architecture/system design. But it absolutely has an impact.
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pjmlp 2y ago
Lucky employer then.

emmanueloga_ 2y ago

Slides: https://github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_Slides/blob/main/2024/Kate%20Gregory/The%20Aging%20Programmer.pdf https://github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_Slides/blob/main/2024/K...

Animats 2y ago
Oh, thanks. The video is an hour long. Slide deck is two minutes. Standard advice on aging. Not programmer specific.
- edgarischatting 2y ago
  I really enjoyed the extra 58 minutes from her talk though, she didnt just read from the slides the added a lot of extra context.

willm 2y ago

Very general advice, but as a 50 year old developer I needed to read this.

ddellacosta 2y ago

I appreciated this. Lots of solid advice and positive and pragmatic thinking here about aging in the context of being a programmer, and more generally too. I'll take this opportunity to make a related pitch regarding back pain in particular, which can become more of a problem if you are sedentary as so many programmers are: if you have chronic back issues you owe it to yourself to at least check out Stuart McGill's Back Mechanic (https://www.backfitpro.com/books/back-mechanic-the-mcgill-method-to-fix-back-pain/ https://www.backfitpro.com/books/back-mechanic-the-mcgill-me...). It's very much in line with this post; in particular the idea that you just have to deal with back pain as a fact of life is--for most people--not the case. Please take a look if you are struggling with back pain. The process he lays out takes work but it's based on solid research and experience and it has helped me tremendously.

kbbgl87 2y ago
Just got that book yesterday because I've been struggling with managing my back pain. Hopefully it'll help mitigate it.
cjbgkagh 2y ago
Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility. I am so hypermobile that none of the traditional ergonomics techniques, including physical therapy, work well enough and I have resorted to using a reclining chair. The reclining chair has worked out great and I really wish I had tried it much sooner. I had not considered it earlier because all of the advice I had received was that it was damaging.
- dtdynasty 2y ago
  > Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility. This does not seem intuitive to me. Why would this be the case?
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I noticed it in general observationally and later found a generic explanation for it. I used to do behavioral analytics and noticed that programmers tend to have a distinct clustering of behaviors. I’m pretty sure it’s the TNXB gene, it’s been overlooked because it’s traditionally hard to sequence but modern sequencing 30x or long reads can find SNPs here. A colleague who has the same rare set of behaviors and interest as me and is also hyper-mobile had found that he has a TNXB SNP combination that should by random chance only occur in 1/10K people, I subsequently did a DNA test and found that I too had the same SNPs. I have since collected more samples from friends and colleagues who are world class in their fields and so far 5 of 5 have had the same TNXB SNPs. It also appears that in reality this combination is much more common than random chance due to sexual selection which should underscore how behaviorally impactful it is. Hyper mobility is considered a spectrum and a theory that I’m yet to prove is that the spectrum is almost entirely down to the number and type of TNXB SNPs. And it appears that people on this spectrum are more likely to be programmers. Consider the over representation of transgenderism in programming. That same over representation exists in hyper-mobility and I would suggest this is due to a common cause.

oytis 2y ago

There is some good advice, but the way she assumes old people have a lot of money, costs go down because of accumulation of assetes and salaries rise faster than inflation, might not be transferable to everyone in all geographies and generations (only read the slides)

valbaca 2y ago
She spends a long time at the beginning of the talk going over all kinds of caveats and disclaimers. It's honestly annoying how much effort people have to put into saying "this won't work for everyone in every situation, all the time" and STILL someone chimes in "UMMMACTUALLY!" who didn't even watch the talk
carschno 2y ago
Indeed. That partly seems to be based on the advice to build (save/invest) money while you are younger, which seems a bit contradictory. I suppose everything is easier when you are rich, including ageing.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  It's not contradictory at all. As Einstein said, "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe."
  - oldpersonintx 2y ago
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- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  The current crop of old people had money when interest rates started high and ended low, which is far better than the opposite of starting low and ending high. There is a lower bound for interest rates and there is a risk component to the rate, especially for regular borrowers. Now consider that during the period of lowering interest rates the risk temporarily dips lower because in general all asset holders are making money. This doesn’t happen if the interest rates merely stay still, in time the risk component will increase and the rate at which people can borrow will increase along with it. I’m not sure what the takeaway should be from this, dysfunctions can last longer than people’s lifetimes so it’s not always a sure bet to bet against it. My prediction which I’ve held for a long time is that the economic dysfunction will create civil unrest. The increase of security cost will undermine profitability impares the ability for asserts to maintain their high values and this will trigger a downturn. It does appear to me that we are in the early stages of civil unrest.

keybored 2y ago

I haven’t seen the submission (video) but I need to shift from my focus from "this is just what it is now" to dealing with problems head-on and mitigating. Also absorbing experiences and knowledge from people who have been where I am at. "This is just how it is now" (you know the refrain) becomes a self-fulfilling phrophecy. Could most problems simply be avoided and mitigated until a long time in the future? I don’t know yet. I don’t have the glass half full attitude yet. Right now it’s mostly "I guess this is just how it is now for me rest of my life." That’s more like my current mindset.

scotty79 2y ago
What I learned so far, at 45, is that you can't rely on your body retaining capabilities just from you not being completely sedentary, as it was the case for me before. You get to keep only the abilities, movements that you actively use in daily (or perhaps weekly) life. For example if you don't squat you'll gradually lose ability to squat even if you run a mile every day. If you don't jump, or jump down regularly you'll lose that ability too. I think it's a good idea to enrich your environment so that you are forced to do the things you'd like to retain. For example sleep on the mattress on the floor to get up from floor level every day. Another idea is barefoot shoes so you don't lose stability and active amortization your feet should provide. If you live in a house with multiple floors and bathrooms always use bathroom on another floor. What's infeasible to implement you'll need to supplant with regular intentional exercise like hip abductions.
- keybored 2y ago
  I listened through Move Your DNA last year (biomechanics) so this makes a lot of sense. On the whole it doesn’t seem that bad, at least this aspect. We just need to do better than sitting for 12+ hours. And I like movement. Not being lethargic. Some things (out of the deluge of information from everywhere) discourage me, like learning that you have been drinking water wrong your whole life or whatever microhabit is ruining your life this week. But I was and am mostly optimistic about the biomechanics stuff. Because there is a ton of potential to do better considering that even athletes can be habitual oversitters. Thanks.

waffletower 2y ago

I don't see the words "standing desk" together in the comments yet. I am using one at the moment and later today I will be sitting. It is important to alternate lest you create new issues IMO.

edgarischatting 2y ago
Im 34. I've used a permanent standing desk for 5 years, along with monitors at a proper height, an ErgoDox EZ keyboard, and a standing pad. I havent experienced any issues so far, what issues could this create for me? I find that if I sit I end up having lower back pain, my legs end up getting tingly after a while, and I just get sleepy if I'm too comfortable. Do I actually need to force myself to sit? I'm moderately fit/athletic, standing has helped me with back pain and neck pains.
twh270 2y ago
Yes, 100%. Being immobile is bad, whether you're standing, sitting, or lying down. (Too much strain from movement is bad too, hence RSI for many of us.) I really enjoy having the flexibility/option of standing or sitting, and IMO a standing desk is one of those purchases that has a 10x payback.
0x5f3759df-i 2y ago
And if you really want to up your game a treadmill desk has been an amazing upgrade. If I just live my typical WFH life I am usually hitting a dismal 2k steps a day. Doing two 45 min to an hour work sessions walking at the treadmill desk had me hitting 10k steps without having to devote any special extra time in my day to exercise.
- pc86 2y ago
  Do you find it's difficult/impossible to type with a treadmill desk setup? That's my largest concern. Even when I'm not coding I spend a decent amount of time doing PRs, Slack, etc.
  - 0x5f3759df-i 2y ago

danbmil 2y ago

My peak programming skills are close to what they were 30 years ago, but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods as I once could. I feel like a pinch hitter: I can do a couple innings at a high level of performance, but I can't keep that level up as long as I used to. OTOH I think I have better judgement when it comes to deep, complex questions of long-term architecture choices. My "meta-programming" skills are sharper than ever.

Kokouane 2y ago
> but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods as I once could. This scares me. I'm younger and thus, I feel like social media and short form content has had so much impact on my ability to focus that it already feels bad where it is right now. Never thought this might be the peak of my concentration power though.
- wonger_ 2y ago
  I've felt the same. I started reading books again though, and I felt a small improvement in my ability to concentrate. Digital detoxing helps too.
- amatecha 2y ago
  I'm 40 and as far as I can tell, I can concentrate just as well now as I did when I was 20. I'm also pretty deliberate with what I do in life, I don't engage in "mass social media" like FB/Twitter/etc. , I don't use YouTube, Tiktok, etc.. .. I mean, I will view something if someone sends a link, but I don't "browse" stuff (partly because browsing literally anything feels like I'm being manipulated and I'm pretty sensitive to that). Sometimes I see someone using a modern social media app like FB, IG or whatever, and I cannot imagine that months and years of this kind of "scrolling endlessly, pausing on things that grab your attention, then resuming" is healthy for one's consciousness or focus. I think the summary is, I live my life the same way I did in 1999 or whatever, as I've found that works for me, and I have to basically actively reject what modern society tries to manipulate me into living like. (btw this is hard to do, EVERYONE and EVERYTHING wants me to be paying attention to millions of disparate trivial things, it's a literal nonstop battle...)

svilen_dobrev 2y ago

interesting. i am 55-ish. "change is the only constant in universe" - whoever said that. For a change, i went long-distance bikepacking 5y ago. 500-1000-1500kms. Then, Learned to e-foil 2y ago.. took me weeks if not months to get the balance right. (While some kid i taught on the beach, needed 25 mins :/) 7000km so far. Traumas not counted - but hey i am (even more) alive. Today seawater was 8'C.. so what. The other day decided to (finally) learn Go.. did the tour mostly, then, what, just read the spec top to bottom (it's short, has interesting recent changes in scope of for-vars). A nice little language as they frame it. (Maybe 25th or 35th programming language i learn. stopped counting long ago) But.. Cannot be bothered to LLMize meself. And Maybe connected, it seems hard to find a (proper) job recently. esp. if excluding some things on ethical grounds.. Which brings cynicism - as described in the article. But yeah. Better Live now. Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery.. have fun

fritzo 2y ago
I haven't tried e-foil, but did I thoroughly enjoy learning to balance on a racing stand up paddle board last summer (only 23" wide). It took me many hilariously humbling weeks of constantly falling off before I could stay up for any distance. I loved feeling inept and awkward but with only benign consequences: failure means a mere dunk in warm water.

tonymet 2y ago

The host is clearly in poor physical condition and many of their concerns are due to lack of proper nutrition , exercise and prescription meds abuse. They appear 15 years older than they should be. Their advice is primarily reactive, and the trivial proactive advice (exercise more) is delivered almost ironically. Take care of yourself now. Drop the weight, get generous activity, get off the meds and you will feel loads better.

troyvit 2y ago
If you skim the transcript you'll see stuff like this: > [...] a big part of what I want to talk about is things you can do in your 20s in your 30s in your 40s in your 50s that lead towards you being able to do what you want which could be nothing or could be programming in your 60s in your 70s uh in your 80s [...] Further in she says: > it's really astonishing the minute you have proof, visual proof to strangers that your body doesn't quite work people assume your mind doesn't quite work. To her point, she's 63. We have no idea what she's seen in her life, what sacrifices she's had to make to get where she is today, or anything. What I see is that she is doing more about it now than most of us in this thread, and it might pay to look past her "poor physical condition" to see what she is conveying.
- tonymet 2y ago
  physical appearance is one of the most informative indicators of health.
  - text0404 2y ago
    this is easily falsifiable, since many diseases are internal: heart disease, low/high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer. also, most mental health issues do not present external indicators. bruce lee was at peak physical performance when he dropped dead. you could smoke cigarettes and take adderall nonstop and still look "healthy".
    - edgarischatting 2y ago

cloverich 2y ago

One thing I've struggled with, that is very personality dependent, is being assertive around younger, sharper programmers. It can be an odd dynamic, where I may work with people smarter and faster but less experienced than myself. It can become difficult depending on the dynamics to push for the best choices in architecture, libraries, etc, when it is something they don't want to do, if you are not explicitly their senior. More naturally confident and assertive programmers will not have this issue. This is particularly problematic when pushing for restraint. For example, choosing a more well supported and stable UI library for an internal tool, vs using one with e.g. more components or more customization. Its hard to sell that there's no money in fancy internal tools, and a limited set of UI that works well and requires little or no support and even less cognitive load, and just working with those constraints, can result in a net benefit long term. Especially when someone that is sharp and fast can bang out working solutions very quickly. Then three years on the tool is only growing, and the complexity is high, re-usability is low, each page is its own snowflake, and someone has to maintain it. The cost suddenly becomes that of an FTE, for a tool that's only occasionally used, which is astronomically cost ineffective. I told you so is worse than worthless because it solves nothing and only burns bridges. You just deal with the outcome and know you should have pushed harder, perhaps even put your job on the line. Tough to do for trivial matters. I think people that excel as aging programmers figure out how to deal with this well, whether through being more assertive, more convincing, more officially senior, or perhaps even more selective about the situations they get themselves into. I guess what's not surprising is that you can work in this career so long, continually on "the same stuff", and yet the patterns and opportunities can provide interesting new problems to solve, not always the ones you thought needed solving.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
> know you should have pushed harder, perhaps even put your job on the line If you are not the ultimate decision-maker, it is not your fault what decision was made. If you are going out of your way to point out the flaws and issues you anticipate, you are doing everything you need and, indeed, everything you reasonably can.

basfo 2y ago

I don't see a problem with my programming skills, but with my ability to play the corporate game. Probably because i have a lot of experience, i kind of know when a manager wants to push a team too much because he wants to play some game of thrones with another manager. I know when they decide to ignore all warnings to get to a deadline, and then when everything explodes they blame someone else. I know when someone has no idea on what he is doing but has too much power. I know when they are demanding world class results on half the time and a tenth of the resources any serious company would dedicate to the effort. Today you have this "go fast, break things" mentality, which sounds cool and "based", but justifies breaking any rule of software engineering (who has time to write test, amirite?). And now with IA, is even worse, any manager thinks they can rewrite their stack because they got "hello world" running on localhost. Maybe i'm getting old...

daxfohl 2y ago
Yup, or EM pitches the big five year vision rearchitecture because that's what builds their empire, even though a cron job that takes a couple days to write would solve the business need.
- daxfohl 2y ago
  And you know that you'll come back in five years and nothing will have changed, except five new services that do half of what the vision required, most systems still depend on what was originally there, the team has tripled in size and most of them are just there to maintain the workarounds of the half-implemented systems, latency, cost, storage, and bug count are all way up, and no new functionality has been built that the original cron job couldn't have handled.
hintymad 2y ago
> Today you have this "go fast, break things" mentality Not in most of the big tech companies, even in the bay area. It's amazing that the bay area companies have managed to grow themselves into giant bureaucratic organizations and they console themselves with bullshit like slow is fast.

ok123456 2y ago

How is BMI racist?

mythrwy 2y ago
Is being overweight healthy for any race? If not, it's probably not a great idea to suggest that it is for the members of the protected race. In fact that seems a bit racist itself.
philk10 2y ago
One example of many - https://www.henryford.com/blog/2023/11/how-bmi-is-flawed-and-race-gender-and-age-based https://www.henryford.com/blog/2023/11/how-bmi-is-flawed-and...
- theultdev 2y ago
  It's in the title, but that article lists no reasons why it's racist. They try to relate it to socioeconomic status, but BMI is applied to poor white people as well. I don't buy that reasoning on face value though, it's perfectly affordable to eat healthy. These days fast food and processed foods are much more expensive than buying fresh groceries. Just a trash article trying to normalize obesity and race-bait.
  - philk10 2y ago
    yeh, the poor neighborhoods are full of grocery stores with fresh food and not food deserts AMA any better as a source? https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fetishizes-white-embodiment-and-racializes-fat-phobia/2023-07 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fet...
    - cloverich 2y ago
      > "food deserts", low-income census tracts that are more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas. One mile. That's absurdly narrow. They are tailoring the definitions to meet the resultant behavior. You can grocery shop once every two weeks or less and be healthier than the average American by eating some of the cheapest possible foods, such as rice, beans, and cabbage, carrots, pasta... as an upper income individual I feed my kids this stuff all the time, its dirt cheap and they (we) are happy to eat it. There's serious problems to be dealt with in the US with respect to lower income support, but IMHO food related ones are mostly cultural / educational, not "lives 2 miles from super market, impossible to eat healthy now".

froh 2y ago

slightly more recent, slightly expanded version of the same talk, with link to slides: https://youtu.be/LArOT95LTJU?si=o100t7URZKOLfoFR https://youtu.be/LArOT95LTJU?si=o100t7URZKOLfoFR

hintymad 2y ago

Lots of interesting personal stories and anecdotes in the comments. I was wondering what the average case would be, though, as I don't think many people, myself included, will be far from the average. Indeed, the video cautioned us in the Disclaimer section at the minute 1:24 and quoted the famous WWII story on survival bias.

amatecha 2y ago

Additional instance of this presentation put on by the same speaker at another conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArOT95LTJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArOT95LTJU

pxc 2y ago

I'm a software engineer maybe half the age of the speaker, probably less. But I am already gradually going blind. (No one knows whether I'll reach legal blindness in 5 years or 25, but its presence in my future is a certainty.) It's striking, if not surprising, how relatable this talk is to me. My biggest difficulties are with contrast and brightness, and it's clear that dropping night driving will be the first major life change required by my degrading vision. Many-- maybe even most-- of the compensatory measures the speaker suggests for dealing with vision loss are already part of my life. For me, these similarities and others feel very natural and very right, even a little comforting. My eye disease is genetic, with no treatments and no cure, and so part of what it has taught and reminded me is that bodies fail, and the terms of when and how they fail isn't up to us. One of the things I really like about this talk is how unsentimental it is (without being cold, either). Disability isn't a question of if but of when and how-- and that's not a tragic thing any more than the abstract fact of death, either-- it's just a part of nature, of life. I like this talk because it reminds us that aging, injury, disability, and adapting to those things (individually and collectively) are common threads in human lives. They're something we should know to expect. We may not be fully in control, but we can prepare-- prepare ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our governments, our cities and towns and neighborhoods-- to accommodate the inevitability of various shades and varieties of disability in ourselves and the people around us. Embracing an awareness of the universality of disability can ground us even in the face of bodily changes that frighten and grieve us. We can know they're not the end of the world because they've always been part of the world around us. This talk may be worth a watch even if you think it's not really about you. :)

PunchTornado 2y ago
Good luck. Hope your sight will hold until they discover a cure.

aaroninsf 2y ago

I'm a better and faster programmer than I've ever been, though I'm probably un-hirable anywhere that filters by age (almost everywhere). My problem in my role atm is not skill, it's the competition for bandwidth both inside the role, and outside it (i.e. that I have a life consistent with my age, which has a lot of moving parts itself). 22-year-old-me worked past midnight, but 22-year-old-me sometimes had to because they couldn't draw boundaries, manage scope, manage time, etc. I was smart then too but had fewer hacks burned into memory. I rarely do late nights now, not because I don't want to—tearing myself away remains excrutiating—but because I can't. Not because of ability, though I'm sure that's diminished objectivley; but because I have responsibilities which don't mesh with no-sleep or being cranky from lack of it.

gosub100 2y ago
I've been a developer for 19 years and never been asked or hinted to "work past midnight". Maybe I'm the outlier, but from my perspective I think your experiences are unusual.

kmoser 2y ago

Lots of good advice, especially for younger people for whom it can pay increasing dividends because they're starting earlier. I have a small quibble about the idea of knowing when you're thirsty. Many people either don't realize when they need to drink more, or actively avoid drinking because they don't want to have to go to the bathroom more frequently. As a result, they are underhydrated and their overall health suffers. (This is largely based on my observations, not any studies, but it was confirmed to me by a PT who encourages people to hydrate more.) So while it may not be necessary to set a timer and drink a liter of water every couple of hours, simply thinking "I'm in touch with my body and I don't feel thirsty" may be a product of deluded wishful thinking. Also she mentioned around the 50 minute mark that "brain games" don't actually help you get better at anything except those brain games, but doing activities you like such as reading are helpful overall. What makes one mental activity more helpful than another? Most programmers tend to like brain games, so you'd figure any mental exercises are better than none, especially if you do different ones.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
I think the point is that (over?) paying for 'brain' games is a waste unless you're doing it solely for leisure.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago

I was enjoying this, but then reached a point where the speaker said > BMI is just nonsense, and not only that, it’s almost certainly racist nonsense […] it has been shown to be healthier in the group they call overweight than the group they call normal Which makes me doubt the veracity of other claims made, to say the least

wakawaka28 2y ago
Yes, it is not necessarily a racist view to assume that people who look different have more in common than not. If American doctors conduct research on a group of people within their own demographics, and that does not apply to all of humanity for some unknown reason, that doesn't mean they are racists. It's a vague guideline anyway with many exceptions such as bodybuilders and people with unusual proportions.
- valbaca 2y ago
  You're equating white with American. > BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    America is a predominantly white country, despite the fact it is one of the least racist and least homogeneous ones in the world. >BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations. This quote you provided proves my point. If there is an inherent bias in choosing from your own population, that doesn't make the study racist. If the study was Chinese and therefore didn't apply perfectly to Americans, that wouldn't make the focus on Chinese people a sign of racism. By the way, affinity for your own group is encouraged in every case except for white people. Other groups aren't so stupid as to hate the homogeneity of their homeland. Go live in a more racially uniform country in Asia or Africa and see how much they care about diversity. They want the opposite.
valbaca 2y ago
Take a cursory look into BMI. It's completely BS. Goes right into the same bin as the food pyramid and the taste-zones of the tongue.

black_13 2y ago

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