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I'm one of those guys programming in my 50s. Technically my jobs involve project management and consulting as well but I still love programming the most. Sayin

I'm one of those guys programming in my 50s. Technically my jobs involve project management and consulting as well but I still love programming the most. Saying that programming "requires little or no education" is from the perspective of either a naturally smart person or the Dunning–Kruger effect. Like any profession, there are some self-motivated people who can do the job effectively without formal education. Yet it saves time to have everyone on the same page with knowledge of basic algorithms, terminology, and problem-solving methods. If money is your motivator for programming in your 20s, the odds are that you will find some other way to make more money and not last until you're 50. At least I hope so.

donpark 14y ago
Yup. While formal education is not necessary, one has to keep learning to stay in the forefront of this profession. If you stop, your 'shelf-life' is 10 yrs at most.
- stevewilhelm 14y ago
  I disagree, if you did any application programming in the mid to late eighties in C/C++, TCP/Sockets, CORBA, Sybase, and X11, about 90% of your experience directly translates to today's Web based application development. Hell, if you use a Linux development environment you will feel right at home.
_yosefk 14y ago
I said "little or no education" compared to other fields. I'm a grad school dropout, so my bet is that my CS education is above average for a working programmer. A hiring process considered "demanding" (such as Google's) is basically testing if you know the stuff they learn in the first year and a half of an undergraduate program. Contrast that to the amount of training and test-taking that a doctor must go through and it'll put what I said in proper context.
- dmethvin 14y ago
  In that case I think "little or no certification" would be more appropriate. It does seem kind of strange that doctors, lawyers, electricians, plumbers, and barbers all have to take tests to get into (and sometimes remain in) their professions, but a programmer can write the software for a missle system, voting machine, or power plant with no certification whatsoever.
  - _yosefk 14y ago
    I think "little required education" is true, for programming, in both senses: no certification, and not that much to learn to become productive compared to other professions. As I said in another thread, I think the reason is that the field is younger and that computers are designed to be comprehensible, unlike human bodies that doctors deal with or legal documents that lawyers deal with, etc. There are programmers with almost zero CS education, formal or otherwise, who are rather productive. This may make the more educated among us cringe at some of their work, but the fact remains. If CS education was essential, it wouldn't happen, whatever we think about the merits of CS education (I rather value mine). A high school dropout could not successfully operate brain tumors; there are many countries where the fact that it's illegal wouldn't stop the practice if it were effective, but it can never be. Similarly for most high-paying professions other than programming and certain types of business.
  - encoderer 14y ago
    The litmus test is not the complexity or impact of the product a professional is working on, but rather: how savvy are the customers and do they need the protection of regulation? All of the professions you named are people who hang a shingle and sell services to low-information customers. Missile systems, voting machines, and power plants are all "sold" to high-information customers that need less gov't protection. Other engineers do need certification and do face legal culpability if they are negligent in their work, but it's inherently different I think. We can talk more about that if you're interested, would like to hear your take.
  - zurn 14y ago
    Possibly US-biased view? From my experience developer certificates are more common among developers than professional certificates among doctors.
cynicalkane 14y ago
One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective. Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it.
- _yosefk 14y ago
  I think CS education is extremely effective, if one does the exercises himself, and as to software engineering, they don't teach about snake oil, either. It's just that there's not that much to learn that is universally applicable, comparatively. The field is young, and then computers are easier to make sense of than most things, because we made them that way. Doctors need to deal with human bodies which aren't designed for human understanding and tinkering. Lawyers need to deal with documents which aren't designed for easy understanding, either - they're designed to prevent hostile, malicious parties from screwing each other. We simply have it easier than most skilled professionals.
- colinb 14y ago
  I think one of the problems with software engineering is that [almost] no one knows anything about it. I've been a working programmer [or software engineer if I've just met you at a party and I think you're cute] for long enough to work on >5 multi-billion dollar projects. Of these, one was delivered on time and according to spec. That company went down the toilet within four years. I've read fairly widely in the software engineering literature starting with Weinberg and Brooks in university, and chasing my share of papers, 'blogs and web pages since then. One of the most positive things that has happened to the field is the recent discovery that the only thing at the end of the methodology rainbow would appear to be consultants [wearing suits with slits for the dorsal fins [h.t. Mr Stross]] and stacks of unread Learn Florble-Oriented Development in 21 days. I know I can build complex systems. I know I can sometimes build simple systems [much much harder.] I don't know how to reliably schedule a project to build a new thing. I think anyone who thinks they do know this is delusional or lying. And in the end, I think it probably doesn't matter. The truth of the software engineering crisis, is that it never existed. And it's possible that software engineering never existed either. We program. We do it because we like it and it pays. The folks who do it only because it pays usually end up in management fucking things up by assuming they can motivate people always and only with money. [oh, on a tangent I've also been a manager. I wasn't all that good at it. The team I managed delivered good stuff, some of it on schedule, but the company still went belly-up. And I learned that I don't enjoy management, and would rather have less money and more fun - take from that what you will]
gnaritas 14y ago
I think he means little or no formal education required; i.e. something the self taught can get into based on merit alone. You can't do that with a lot of high paying professions as they absolutely require formal education.
krapp 14y ago
I'm 35 and I just recently started trying to turn what had been a hobby into something that pays. I harbor no illusions about ever making decent money at it though.
- eru 14y ago
  Just concentrate on doing hard stuff.
  - krapp 14y ago
    I want to. I do have a ton of for-the-love projects which seemed impossible when I started, that i've learned a lot from, failure by failure. I've even got an app I'm building in Laravel (and this is the last you'll likely hear about it.) Unfortunately with where I'm at right now it's just been scutwork that puts gas in the car. I might even take a cs course this year assuming it's possible to get the loans. I'm still paying off an art degree though. By the way never get an art degree.
    - eru 14y ago
      You can take lots of courses from top universities online for free. That won't give you the piece of paper, you'd get when you paid for them, but all the knowledge is still there.

donpark 14y ago

Yup. While formal education is not necessary, one has to keep learning to stay in the forefront of this profession. If you stop, your 'shelf-life' is 10 yrs at most.

stevewilhelm 14y ago
I disagree, if you did any application programming in the mid to late eighties in C/C++, TCP/Sockets, CORBA, Sybase, and X11, about 90% of your experience directly translates to today's Web based application development. Hell, if you use a Linux development environment you will feel right at home.

_yosefk 14y ago

I said "little or no education" compared to other fields. I'm a grad school dropout, so my bet is that my CS education is above average for a working programmer. A hiring process considered "demanding" (such as Google's) is basically testing if you know the stuff they learn in the first year and a half of an undergraduate program. Contrast that to the amount of training and test-taking that a doctor must go through and it'll put what I said in proper context.

dmethvin 14y ago
In that case I think "little or no certification" would be more appropriate. It does seem kind of strange that doctors, lawyers, electricians, plumbers, and barbers all have to take tests to get into (and sometimes remain in) their professions, but a programmer can write the software for a missle system, voting machine, or power plant with no certification whatsoever.
- _yosefk 14y ago
  I think "little required education" is true, for programming, in both senses: no certification, and not that much to learn to become productive compared to other professions. As I said in another thread, I think the reason is that the field is younger and that computers are designed to be comprehensible, unlike human bodies that doctors deal with or legal documents that lawyers deal with, etc. There are programmers with almost zero CS education, formal or otherwise, who are rather productive. This may make the more educated among us cringe at some of their work, but the fact remains. If CS education was essential, it wouldn't happen, whatever we think about the merits of CS education (I rather value mine). A high school dropout could not successfully operate brain tumors; there are many countries where the fact that it's illegal wouldn't stop the practice if it were effective, but it can never be. Similarly for most high-paying professions other than programming and certain types of business.
- encoderer 14y ago
  The litmus test is not the complexity or impact of the product a professional is working on, but rather: how savvy are the customers and do they need the protection of regulation? All of the professions you named are people who hang a shingle and sell services to low-information customers. Missile systems, voting machines, and power plants are all "sold" to high-information customers that need less gov't protection. Other engineers do need certification and do face legal culpability if they are negligent in their work, but it's inherently different I think. We can talk more about that if you're interested, would like to hear your take.
- zurn 14y ago
  Possibly US-biased view? From my experience developer certificates are more common among developers than professional certificates among doctors.

cynicalkane 14y ago

One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective. Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it.

_yosefk 14y ago
I think CS education is extremely effective, if one does the exercises himself, and as to software engineering, they don't teach about snake oil, either. It's just that there's not that much to learn that is universally applicable, comparatively. The field is young, and then computers are easier to make sense of than most things, because we made them that way. Doctors need to deal with human bodies which aren't designed for human understanding and tinkering. Lawyers need to deal with documents which aren't designed for easy understanding, either - they're designed to prevent hostile, malicious parties from screwing each other. We simply have it easier than most skilled professionals.
colinb 14y ago
I think one of the problems with software engineering is that [almost] no one knows anything about it. I've been a working programmer [or software engineer if I've just met you at a party and I think you're cute] for long enough to work on >5 multi-billion dollar projects. Of these, one was delivered on time and according to spec. That company went down the toilet within four years. I've read fairly widely in the software engineering literature starting with Weinberg and Brooks in university, and chasing my share of papers, 'blogs and web pages since then. One of the most positive things that has happened to the field is the recent discovery that the only thing at the end of the methodology rainbow would appear to be consultants [wearing suits with slits for the dorsal fins [h.t. Mr Stross]] and stacks of unread Learn Florble-Oriented Development in 21 days. I know I can build complex systems. I know I can sometimes build simple systems [much much harder.] I don't know how to reliably schedule a project to build a new thing. I think anyone who thinks they do know this is delusional or lying. And in the end, I think it probably doesn't matter. The truth of the software engineering crisis, is that it never existed. And it's possible that software engineering never existed either. We program. We do it because we like it and it pays. The folks who do it only because it pays usually end up in management fucking things up by assuming they can motivate people always and only with money. [oh, on a tangent I've also been a manager. I wasn't all that good at it. The team I managed delivered good stuff, some of it on schedule, but the company still went belly-up. And I learned that I don't enjoy management, and would rather have less money and more fun - take from that what you will]

gnaritas 14y ago

I think he means little or no formal education required; i.e. something the self taught can get into based on merit alone. You can't do that with a lot of high paying professions as they absolutely require formal education.

krapp 14y ago

I'm 35 and I just recently started trying to turn what had been a hobby into something that pays. I harbor no illusions about ever making decent money at it though.

eru 14y ago
Just concentrate on doing hard stuff.
- krapp 14y ago
  I want to. I do have a ton of for-the-love projects which seemed impossible when I started, that i've learned a lot from, failure by failure. I've even got an app I'm building in Laravel (and this is the last you'll likely hear about it.) Unfortunately with where I'm at right now it's just been scutwork that puts gas in the car. I might even take a cs course this year assuming it's possible to get the loans. I'm still paying off an art degree though. By the way never get an art degree.
  - eru 14y ago
    You can take lots of courses from top universities online for free. That won't give you the piece of paper, you'd get when you paid for them, but all the knowledge is still there.