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That said, while I appreciate your sentiment, I know in my heart that the author is right. Even the "keep up with technology" people know in their hearts that

That said, while I appreciate your sentiment, I know in my heart that the author is right. Even the "keep up with technology" people know in their hearts that these articles are correct. Everyone knows programmers have a half-life, they just are in disagreement about when it kicks in. Nearly everyone would be surprised to discover a 60 year old programmer who was still gainfully employed. 50 is really pushing it, 40 is pushing it, and 35 is starting to push it. In contrast, nobody would think it was weird to see a 40, 50 or even 60 year old doctor or lawyer.

wglb 17y ago
Raising my hand. Been programming for 43 years, still going strong. Hopefully, I am done with C++, but who can tell.
- eru 17y ago
  My grandfather was programming for a similar length of time before he retired. He made his last money maintaining mainframe assembler and Cobol programs, though. (He jokingly described himself as a classical philologist for computer languages.)
  - wglb 17y ago
    I remember job ads looking for mainframe programmers of many stripes to maintain vintage systems, as many cobol and assembly and jcl professionals had retired. There is still a lot of it out there.
netsp 17y ago
It's a bit early for these comments. There aren't that many programmers in their 50s because there wasn't as much need for programmers in their twenties, 30 years ago. Demand for doctors has been more steady. That's half the story, but it's a big part of it. The other half is that it's an area with gradual drift out & little drift in. That half needs some explaining but it seems like more of a young man's game then it is. It's easy to get behind. If you're out for 2 years, it's daunting to get back in. The opposite is true for some domain (like medicine). You get very little drift in to the field (more programmers become HR people or sales people then the other way around). It's a first career, not a second.
- gaius 17y ago
  It depends. You could be out of Unix or C or Oracle for 2 years and come back. It's only "front-end" technologies like Flash, Rails, PHP, AJAX that suffer from the rapid churn and the latest thing when you come back didn't even exist when you left.
  - netsp 17y ago
    I wouldn't really know personally, but my reasoning was that not only technology moves, you forget or lose the feel.

wglb 17y ago

Raising my hand. Been programming for 43 years, still going strong. Hopefully, I am done with C++, but who can tell.

eru 17y ago
My grandfather was programming for a similar length of time before he retired. He made his last money maintaining mainframe assembler and Cobol programs, though. (He jokingly described himself as a classical philologist for computer languages.)
- wglb 17y ago
  I remember job ads looking for mainframe programmers of many stripes to maintain vintage systems, as many cobol and assembly and jcl professionals had retired. There is still a lot of it out there.

netsp 17y ago

It's a bit early for these comments. There aren't that many programmers in their 50s because there wasn't as much need for programmers in their twenties, 30 years ago. Demand for doctors has been more steady. That's half the story, but it's a big part of it. The other half is that it's an area with gradual drift out & little drift in. That half needs some explaining but it seems like more of a young man's game then it is. It's easy to get behind. If you're out for 2 years, it's daunting to get back in. The opposite is true for some domain (like medicine). You get very little drift in to the field (more programmers become HR people or sales people then the other way around). It's a first career, not a second.

gaius 17y ago
It depends. You could be out of Unix or C or Oracle for 2 years and come back. It's only "front-end" technologies like Flash, Rails, PHP, AJAX that suffer from the rapid churn and the latest thing when you come back didn't even exist when you left.
- netsp 17y ago
  I wouldn't really know personally, but my reasoning was that not only technology moves, you forget or lose the feel.