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I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful. Me to. And I've worked with devs in the 20s who are awful. And their 30s. And their 40s. And

I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful. Me to. And I've worked with devs in the 20s who are awful. And their 30s. And their 40s. And their 60s. I've also worked with great devs in all those age ranges. Proportions seem about the same to me. Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers can't do that. I've not noticed a difference. I have noticed that it's harder to spot the folk in their 20s who don't learn and adapt quickly since folk in their 20s have to learn something to make any progress at all. Once that pressure is off and they've become fixated on Rails / C# / whatever they seem just as unlikely to change as any other age range. They just get fixated on the "cool" thing - so it takes longer to spot.

deleted 14y ago
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krishnakv 14y ago
> Proportions seem about the same to me. Are you sure the proportion was the same? Reason I am asking is because for people who are bad at programming, there are various process/ management roles available that might better suit. It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent. Beyond the 30's, I imagine people would be passionate about it to continue taking up programming roles. And this passion should translate into excellence. Happy to be corrected if you have any data-points.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent. I don't have any hard data I'm afraid - just my fallible recollections ;-) Some of ways of getting non-excellent old developers that I've observed: * Not all old developers have been programming for a couple of decades. People can and do come into development late - and suffer all the normal problems of newbie developers. * You'll be amazed at how little work you can get away with in some large organisations. When you have a couple of hundred people on a project you will find one or two Wallys from Dilbert. * The devs who have sunk deep into some gnarly legacy system or language. Being the person who knows the right bit to tweak in the middle of a 1500 line procedure in the middle of a big-ball-of-mud project might be stupidly valuable to a company - but produce a lousy developer in any other context. * The "senior" developer / architect / lead who has been Peter Principled to their level of incompetence, but whose team is good enough to cover up the deficit in leadership ability. * The large chunk of bad developers (of all ages) who don't realise they're bad developers. Folk can't improve until they understand where they suck.

deleted 14y ago

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krishnakv 14y ago

> Proportions seem about the same to me. Are you sure the proportion was the same? Reason I am asking is because for people who are bad at programming, there are various process/ management roles available that might better suit. It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent. Beyond the 30's, I imagine people would be passionate about it to continue taking up programming roles. And this passion should translate into excellence. Happy to be corrected if you have any data-points.

adrianhoward 14y ago
It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent. I don't have any hard data I'm afraid - just my fallible recollections ;-) Some of ways of getting non-excellent old developers that I've observed: * Not all old developers have been programming for a couple of decades. People can and do come into development late - and suffer all the normal problems of newbie developers. * You'll be amazed at how little work you can get away with in some large organisations. When you have a couple of hundred people on a project you will find one or two Wallys from Dilbert. * The devs who have sunk deep into some gnarly legacy system or language. Being the person who knows the right bit to tweak in the middle of a 1500 line procedure in the middle of a big-ball-of-mud project might be stupidly valuable to a company - but produce a lousy developer in any other context. * The "senior" developer / architect / lead who has been Peter Principled to their level of incompetence, but whose team is good enough to cover up the deficit in leadership ability. * The large chunk of bad developers (of all ages) who don't realise they're bad developers. Folk can't improve until they understand where they suck.