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"But large scale, high stress coding? I may have to admit that's a young man's game." No, it's a stupid person's game (sure it's mostly men, but not 100%). I'm

"But large scale, high stress coding? I may have to admit that's a young man's game." No, it's a stupid person's game (sure it's mostly men, but not 100%). I'm 55 and have been coding professionally since 1981 and started in school in 1973 or so. One thing I've learned for sure is that coding yourself to death is not worth it in the end. People who want to be coding in their 50s should follow this advice. It's burning yourself out on arbitrary deadlines for meaningless business bullshit that pushes a lot of us out. A 5-year burnout, at any age, is pretty much impossible to recover from in this industry. Programming becomes less bipolar (for lack of a better word) as you get older because you stop getting emotionally invested in things that don't deserve it, and you also become more willing to steal an education at work (thus ensuring that, regardless of what your project does, you'll be fine).

jamesmcn 14y ago
People who want to be coding at all should follow this advice. An easy way to turbocharge a team of hot-shot young developers is as follows: Tell them to not come in over the weekend (unless there is a seriously important deadline that cannot be handled any other way, and this has been discussed with the team). Tell them to go home in time to be able to go out to dinner or catch a movie (tricky, because odds are good that they are coming in to work late, and we do want everyone doing roughly 8 hour days, five days a week). Tell them to spend less time coding and more time planning. It can take a few weeks for the improvements to materialize, but overall productivity will go up. Code quality will go up. Energy and enthusiasm will go up. Once you see these upticks, you can work on all the other things that the team needs to do to improve their code. And then when the shit hits the fan and you do need to push the team, there will be room to push them. They will have energy reserves they can draw on. They will have trust in you as a manager. They will be able to draw on that extra 10%. Marathon coding is a great way to deliver a terrible product that is hard to maintain

jamesmcn 14y ago

People who want to be coding at all should follow this advice. An easy way to turbocharge a team of hot-shot young developers is as follows: Tell them to not come in over the weekend (unless there is a seriously important deadline that cannot be handled any other way, and this has been discussed with the team). Tell them to go home in time to be able to go out to dinner or catch a movie (tricky, because odds are good that they are coming in to work late, and we do want everyone doing roughly 8 hour days, five days a week). Tell them to spend less time coding and more time planning. It can take a few weeks for the improvements to materialize, but overall productivity will go up. Code quality will go up. Energy and enthusiasm will go up. Once you see these upticks, you can work on all the other things that the team needs to do to improve their code. And then when the shit hits the fan and you do need to push the team, there will be room to push them. They will have energy reserves they can draw on. They will have trust in you as a manager. They will be able to draw on that extra 10%. Marathon coding is a great way to deliver a terrible product that is hard to maintain