I enjoyed this article. I happen to know a few programmers that are a little older (and I definitely feel old even though I’m “only” 35), but almost all of us seem to be at least a little grumpy about how fast stuff changes without actually improving a whole lot over (and sometimes being objectively worse than) what has come before.
And I sometimes worry about not being able to keep up. I’m lucky that the team I work in has some younger people in it (and people have diverse interests), which “forces” me to keep up with new developments, as others keep introducing brand new technology into our stacks. But I don’t really have the intrinsic motivation (or free time!) to play with new stuff myself anymore. I find it much more interesting to learn new algorithms and, occasionally, fundamentally new ways of doing things.
Basically, I don’t mind working with new things, but it needs to be clear what the benefits are. I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time just trying out different new technologies. Separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult, especially since there are new libraries and frameworks coming out every week! And just reading about them is often not enough to form a good impression; these blog posts are often written by starry-eyed developers who have only tried a new tech on trivial weekend projects, but haven’t tried to stretch the software to its limits, which is what is bound to happen in a real world project.
Great article. As an “older” developer switching to the management track (partly in order to keep my job market open), this resonates.
I enjoyed this article. I happen to know a few programmers that are a little older (and I definitely feel old even though I’m “only” 35), but almost all of us seem to be at least a little grumpy about how fast stuff changes without actually improving a whole lot over (and sometimes being objectively worse than) what has come before.
And I sometimes worry about not being able to keep up. I’m lucky that the team I work in has some younger people in it (and people have diverse interests), which “forces” me to keep up with new developments, as others keep introducing brand new technology into our stacks. But I don’t really have the intrinsic motivation (or free time!) to play with new stuff myself anymore. I find it much more interesting to learn new algorithms and, occasionally, fundamentally new ways of doing things.
Basically, I don’t mind working with new things, but it needs to be clear what the benefits are. I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time just trying out different new technologies. Separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult, especially since there are new libraries and frameworks coming out every week! And just reading about them is often not enough to form a good impression; these blog posts are often written by starry-eyed developers who have only tried a new tech on trivial weekend projects, but haven’t tried to stretch the software to its limits, which is what is bound to happen in a real world project.