4 ms·
Hard to say but to back his claim that he was programming since the 90's his CV shows he was working on stuff that's clearly more than your basic undergraduate
by godelski 11mo ago
Hard to say but to back his claim that he was programming since the 90's his CV shows he was working on stuff that's clearly more than your basic undergraduate skill level since the early 2000's. I'd be willing to bet he has more years under his belt than most HN users. I mean I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's, and this guy has been programming most my life. Though that doesn't explicitly imply experience, or more specifically experience in what.
That said, I think people really under appreciate how diverse programmers actually are. I started in physics and came over when I went to grad school. While I wouldn't expect a physicist to do super well on leetcode problems I've seen those same people write incredible code that's optimized for HPC systems and they're really good at tracing bottlenecks (it's a skill that translates from physics really really well). Hell, the best programmer I've ever met got that way because he was doing his PhD in mechanical engineering. He's practically the leading expert in data streaming for HPC systems and gained this skill because he needed more performance for his other work.
There's a lot of different types of programmers out there but I think it's too easy to think the field is narrow.
- AceJohnny2 11mo ago> I mean I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's sigh
- jjgreen 11mo agoI got a coat older than that (and in decent nick).
- LgWoodenBadger 11mo agoI used to tell the “kids” that I worked with that I have a bowling ball older than them.
- wombatpm 11mo agoI was greeted with blank stares by the kids on my team when they wanted to rewrite an existing program from scratch, and I said that will work for as well as it did with Netscape. Dang whippersnappers
- anthk 11mo agoI own 90's comic books and video games older than most Gen-Z users in HN.
- bojo 11mo agoI feel like a grandpa after reading that comment now.
- psychoslave 11mo agoThis year my in-your-face-old-fart-moment was realising I was contributing to Wikimedia projects for longer than some fellow wikimedians existed. XD
- godelski 11mo agoBut am I wrong? I am joking, but good jokes have an element of truth...
- omnicognate 11mo agoDepends what you mean by "old". If you mean elderly then obviously you're not. If you mean "past it" then it might reassure you to know the average expecting mother is in her 30s now (in the UK). Even if you just mean "grown up", recent research [1] on brain development identifies adolescence as typically extending into the early thirties, with (brain) adulthood running from there to the mid sixties before even then only entering the "early aging" stage. For my part, I'm a lot older than you and don't consider myself old. Indeed, I think prematurely thinking of yourself as old can be a pretty bad mistake, health-wise. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65974-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65974-8
- godelski 11mo agoFWIW I doubt I'd consider you old were I to know your actual age. I still think I'm quite young
- AceJohnny2 11mo ago"inside every old person there is a young one wondering what happened."
- AceJohnny2 11mo agoIt'd be interesting the know the median age of HN commenters. I guess the median age of YCombinator cohorts is <30 ?
- xupybd 11mo agoI assume you're on the younger end
- godelski 11mo ago
- mikewarot 11mo ago>I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's I'm 62, and I'm not old yet, you're just a kid. ;-) Seriously, there are some folks here who started on punch cards and/or paper tape in the 1960s.
- godelski 11mo agoThanks. I meant is more of in a joking way, poking fun at the community. I know I'm far too young to earn a gray beard, but I hope to in the next 20-30 years ;-) I still got a lot to learn till that happens
- Aeolun 11mo agoYou wish, that gray beard sometimes appears in your late thirties.
- godelski 11mo agoMaybe. But also what I though was a gray beard in my early 20's is very different from what I think a gray beard is now. The number of those I've considered wizards decreased, and I think this should be true for most people. It's harder to differentiate experts as a novice, but as you get closer the resolution increases.
- jader201 11mo agoThe more I know, the more I know I don’t know.
- popcorncowboy 11mo ago...and the more I know you don't know. [On the disappearance of wizards as you age]
- godelski 11mo agoBoth definitely contribute. But at the same time the people who stay wizards (and the people you realize are wizards but didn't previously) only appear to be more magical than ever. Some magic tricks are unimpressive when you know how they are done. But that's not true for all of them. Some of them only become more and more impressive, only truly being able to be appreciated by other masters. The best magic tricks don't just impress an audience, they impress an audience of magicians.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- anthk 11mo ago38 there. If you didn't suffer Win9x's 'stability', then editing X11 config files by hand, getting mad with ALSA/Dmix, writing new ad-hoc drivers for weird BTTV tuners reusing old known ones for $WEIRDBRAND, you didn't live.
- groovy2shoes 11mo agothe anxiety that i might fry my monitor by setting the wrong scan rate haunts me to this day
- 72deluxe 11mo agoThe squealing noise of a monitor in the wrong rate is a memorable noise etched in my brain.
- pjmlp 11mo agoMy first home computer was bought in 1986, before that the only electronics at home were Game & Watch handhelds, like Manhole. I guess I am reaching Gandalf status then. :)
- techiferous 11mo ago> I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's, The 30s is the first decade of life that people experience where there are adults younger than them. This inevitably leads people in their 30s to start saying that they are "old" even though they generally have decades of vigor ahead of them.
- xxs 11mo ago> I'm considered old here, in my mid 30 That's absolutely not true. It was awkwardly funny to read that.
- swiftcoder 11mo agoI've been the oldest guy on several teams in row now, starting in my early 30s. FAANG/startup culture skews very young
- aswegs8 11mo agoGood news for you: average age on HN is 42 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849