Hacker News Reader

Comment by Wintamute | Hacker News Reader

I'd say it's an interplay between the following issues,

1 - Writing code is a young man's game. Older devs get one too many platform/language iterations behind the curve so can't apply for as many jobs - obviously not true for everyone, but could account for something

2 - Older devs are tempted into management, and so write emails for a living instead of code

3 - Older devs may have more commitments outside of work, so can't take on jobs that demand long hours in the office and long hours at home keeping up with tools and trends

4 - Huge numbers of people are starting to realise you can make good money sitting on your arse all day and writing code, so there are lots of them applying for jobs with low experience - that's not to say many of them will still be trying a few years from now

5 - All the best experienced older devs don't apply to job ads, they just move easily between contracts using their network

View on HN

A young man's opinion :-) Speaking as someone with 33 years experience writing code at a high level, I have lost nothing over the years except the attitude that only young people can code. What matters is desire to learn and keep ahead of the curve, and continued enjoyment of writing code. I've seen people lose that at every age group.

Young people usually write crap code in my 11 years experience. (Not all of them but probably the majority of them).

I knew one young guy in particular who prized indirection over all things. Debugging his code for something relatively simple involved jumping up and down at least 10 rungs of indirection or "abstraction" and was by and large a nightmare to extend or maintain.

But, he always, without exception exuded confidence and delivered new features quickly. He was hired as a senior architect at several startups before he turned 25.

I seem to have had the jobs cleaning up after these peoples mess.

This post reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, "I am not young enough to know everything."

In reality, there are plenty of excellent older developers around who are still building stuff. They just aren't building it at the kind of company where you reach the most senior recognised development position after as little as five years, you've run out of interesting problems to solve in half that time anyway, the management think productive developers are the ones who work so many hours that they can't have a family and/or social life at the same time, and the junior developers think grandpa can't program with anything invented since COBOL.

Meanwhile, look at the guru everyone turns to in a small-to-medium sized shop, the top-billing freelance/contractor/consultant crowd, the disproportionately successful founder demographics, and the guys who are lecturing everyone else with "Fellow" in their title at the bigger technical firms, and you'll find plenty of places where the very experienced and capable hackers are still plying their trade quite happily.

2 - 4 agree with my experience, but you could not be more wrong about #1. The developers that I see with problems adapting to new developments tools and paradigms are younger people who only know 1 framework. Us old timers who are solid in the basics can pick up a new language fast and easy.

I did qualify #1 with "obviously not true for everyone, but could account for something". And I speak from some experience too. I'm 34 and have lived through the platform I was invested in disappearing almost over night and having to quickly get up to speed on some new platforms and languages over the course of about 6 months while I supported myself. It was quite exciting, but also quite stressful and tiring. If I was faced with the same event again I think I might opt for defaulting to a more managerial position rather than try to become expert in a new area again. Everyone's different of course, but I didn't make the point lightly or naively.

Honestly, once you learn 5 or 6 languages/frameworks they get really easy to learn. There is not a lot that is truly new with different frameworks, just different combinations of the same things.

Sure, frameworks are easy to pick up. But becoming expert enough in a new platform and/or language to walk into top global companies and charge exorbitant freelance day rates for highly technical work and consultation? Personally, I don't find that "really easy" - and I don't think anyone should.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com