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Comment by dan00 | Hacker News Reader

> The big picture is that computer programming is a field with low barriers to entry and where young people have a significant advantage.

Computer programming isn't just one field, there're several completely different fields. All what you said might be true for the web development field, where the technology at hand isn't really that hard and you apply more or less the same technology and knowledge for each web project.

But there're several other fields where experience and knowledge are a lot harder to gain, and therefore also count a lot more, just look at the systems programming world or the more engineering heavy fields.

At my firm are a lot of >50 year old people, which are valued a lot for their knowledge, and our work isn't about getting shit done as fast as possible, but about getting something done right.

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>>But there're several other fields where experience and knowledge are a lot harder to gain

Factor in internet that statement isn't true anymore. The amount of knowledge on the net today is mind boggling. Its scary to imagine how much information has become cheap and easy to access these days. And no one knows where this is all heading.

The jobs that require knowledge and experience hard to gain are already very few and shrinking with every coming day.

>>work isn't about getting shit done as fast as possible, but about getting something done right.

Wait until a 20 year old shows how it can be done fast and right.

(Insert quip about queuing theory and unbounded wait times.)

I temporarily worked in safety-critical software development. There's a lot of tools in that domain that simply aren't as googlable(read: expensive) and cannot be learned online.

Often, in these sort of situations, the field isn't even that visible. I certainly didn't know how extensive it was until I worked in it.

>>Wait until a 20 year old shows how it can be done fast and right.

I will applaud the 20 year old who somehow manages to disrupt the safe software industry, but I doubt it will ever happen.

The internet makes information easily available, but it doesn't always provide context. For example Hadoop is great for big data, but I trust the fourty-something year old more than the twenty-something year old to know when to ignore the current trend product and use stream processing instead.

And I'm saying that as a twenty-something.

A few points come to mind. Are the 50 yo people really computer programmers, or are they managers / architects / scientists / etc?

The point is not that there is nothing to learn, but that after 8 - 10 years, additional learning/experience does not give you a competitive advantage compared to younger programmers.

Finally, you can always have exceptions, niches, etc. That does not change the dynamic for the field as a whole.

I know several older programmers 55+ who run rings around younger programms. They don't just write better code they also pick up new systems, languages, and techniques faster.

I suspect part of this simple selection bias where the best stick with programming for longer periods, but there is huge bennifits to really wide ranging backgrounds. Sure, many things become outdated, but the 4th time you see the same idea presented in a new way your just picking up syntax not a new way to think.

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