Compared to the number of younger developers in our field, there just aren’t many people who have wisdom that can only come from 30+ years of professional experience. Personally, I feel like my perspectives have changed significantly (for the better) over the past 10 years, and that has definitely helped make work more rewarding.
I am looking forward to working in technology when I’m 50. It’s entirely possible that will change over the next 20 years, but I hope it doesn’t.
Have you ever watched an old (70+), skilled martial arts fighter? Small, deliberate movements that can instantly take down opponents.
When I was 20 I had the energy to to rewrite my solution several (only to find that the solution really didn’t matter). As I grow older I feel like I see more of the edge cases, can account for them with less code, and in the end come up with a more elegant solution. Less code but more productive. I feel good about where I’m headed; I can’t imagine my skills at 50.
I randomly ended up chatting to a programmer (and chip designer) who must have been in his late 60s or possibly 70s at a friends dinner event this week. He was incredibly passionate about programming and we ended up chatting about all sorts from assembly code up to modern javascript frameworks and meta-languages. If he is anything to go by, I say why not?
“It’s about trying to come up with a working solution in a problem domain that you don’t fully understand and don’t have time to understand.”
To me, that’s the fun part! Who else gets to dive into a previously unknown domain, immerse themselves in it just long enough to figure something out and mentally construct a solution around whatever hurdles they find? It’s almost unknown, unless your name is Mulder or Scully.
Compared to the number of younger developers in our field, there just aren’t many people who have wisdom that can only come from 30+ years of professional experience. Personally, I feel like my perspectives have changed significantly (for the better) over the past 10 years, and that has definitely helped make work more rewarding.
I am looking forward to working in technology when I’m 50. It’s entirely possible that will change over the next 20 years, but I hope it doesn’t.
I hope that I am still programming at age 50.
Have you ever watched an old (70+), skilled martial arts fighter? Small, deliberate movements that can instantly take down opponents.
When I was 20 I had the energy to to rewrite my solution several (only to find that the solution really didn’t matter). As I grow older I feel like I see more of the edge cases, can account for them with less code, and in the end come up with a more elegant solution. Less code but more productive. I feel good about where I’m headed; I can’t imagine my skills at 50.
I randomly ended up chatting to a programmer (and chip designer) who must have been in his late 60s or possibly 70s at a friends dinner event this week. He was incredibly passionate about programming and we ended up chatting about all sorts from assembly code up to modern javascript frameworks and meta-languages. If he is anything to go by, I say why not?
“It’s about trying to come up with a working solution in a problem domain that you don’t fully understand and don’t have time to understand.”
To me, that’s the fun part! Who else gets to dive into a previously unknown domain, immerse themselves in it just long enough to figure something out and mentally construct a solution around whatever hurdles they find? It’s almost unknown, unless your name is Mulder or Scully.