Developer's Age !
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Hello, Just wanted to know if there are people out there willing to complete their lives in programming, in other words, how do you plan your career vs. your age, I have seen developers aged at 40s and 50s, do you think that the one should quit development at a certain age and shift to technical consultations or project management, and if you are old, and still into code, does this make you small or big ( I think it varies from one country to another ) ? Please share your experience here !
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
I'll be 44 in a week. Started out with IBM Mainframes and the Heathkit mini's Been through punch cards & teletypes. Then the console went from a TTY 33 to a ADM3 CRT 'glass teletype.' My personal computer started out running CPM and then DOS 2.0 My first hard drive cost several hundred dollars and held 5 MB. I thought it was great that I no longer had to load Pascal from 8" disks. The internet started as an ugly cable terminating in a huge connector labelled 'ARPA.' When the internet finally caught on there was a big debate about using it for pure knowledge or commerce. Turbo Pascal, VB3, VB4, VB5, VB6, ASP and ASP.net. It keeps getting better. And MySQL is free! The things we can do today - absolutely great. Just wait and see what lies ahead. I personally like coding since I work from my home. I may stay coding a few more years. I'll see what happens. Stay current, take advantage of opportunities to upgrade your skills, invest your money wisely for your future years and enjoy life. Live long and prosper. Etc.
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Hey, I am so sorry if you've got it as discriminatory expression, I just wanted to give an example, with all respect to you. However, I am eager to hear about your experience, I know I will be 35 in 5 years time, that's why I want to learn from your experience :)
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
I am an "old turd". I work where pretty much every one is an "old turd". Many of us work in health care and use SAS. Funny, they don't teach SAS overseas, so for the time being we won't be H1B'nized. However this "old turd" is scoping out a new carreer path in human resources. Someone has to be there to supervise you youngn'z outsourcing. MrPlankton aka ("old turd")
MrPlankton
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Hello, Just wanted to know if there are people out there willing to complete their lives in programming, in other words, how do you plan your career vs. your age, I have seen developers aged at 40s and 50s, do you think that the one should quit development at a certain age and shift to technical consultations or project management, and if you are old, and still into code, does this make you small or big ( I think it varies from one country to another ) ? Please share your experience here !
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
No, I think that wisdom comes with age and experience. The older generation can provide insight into areas and directions that younger people can't. For example older technologies get abandoned and the younger people don't learn them. Then when it becomes necessary to use them who has to do it.. Its like black smithing.
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Hello, Just wanted to know if there are people out there willing to complete their lives in programming, in other words, how do you plan your career vs. your age, I have seen developers aged at 40s and 50s, do you think that the one should quit development at a certain age and shift to technical consultations or project management, and if you are old, and still into code, does this make you small or big ( I think it varies from one country to another ) ? Please share your experience here !
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
I have always love doing programming though I'm still quite "young" in programming. I got fond of computer and programming since primary school. But my love for programming only started blooming since secondary school where I only had chance to touch on BASIC a tad. I don't really program until I furthered by studies in college and I fall in love with programming and web development since then. I do not know whether I will continue to code or not, but by writing codes, that keep my minds fresh and running all the time (tired though, but I get excited and energetic when I program). I don't really program during my free time, but I did keep programming as my hobbies. Most of the time after work, I do scripting and edit/add-on the scripts in my forum and personal blog. I love it even though I'm only 27 right now. Only doing serious programming for 2 years now. Not having the chance before this due to lack of relevant working experience until I landed myself in the current company based on my little bit of experience in a VB browser project for a secondary school internet kiosks while I were working there as a IT trainer =) Cheers, Jenson :: Vision is Power ::
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Hello, Just wanted to know if there are people out there willing to complete their lives in programming, in other words, how do you plan your career vs. your age, I have seen developers aged at 40s and 50s, do you think that the one should quit development at a certain age and shift to technical consultations or project management, and if you are old, and still into code, does this make you small or big ( I think it varies from one country to another ) ? Please share your experience here !
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
I have been programming since the 70s when we had machines that filled whole buildings (if you ever saw them at all). In my 30s, I was asked several times to move into management roles. In the 1990s, we had a couple of recessions and many of those managers ended up on the heap. In my 40s, they stopped asking me to be a manager as I was considered to be too old. Now they treat me like a mysterious sage. The benefits are that I get to sit on expensive ergonomic chairs, wear loose clothing and always have a huge screen. Perhaps they'll offer me incontinence care soon.:-D:-D:-D
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That's great Jim, I would like to know if you are coding just for coding, or you are a member in a development team?
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
I am working full-time as a developer for ChartLogic, Inc. We sell an Electronic Medical Office software package. My task is to build an internet-enabled thin-client version of the package so doctors can work from wherever they happen to be, without being tied to the LAN in the practice office. Lots of fun!
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The journey with computer of more than 45 years must be very interesting.
Jwalant Soneji (BE IT) Mobile: +91 9969059127 http://jnsoneji.spaces.live.com http://jnsoneji.blogspot.com
The interesting part is a) looking back at all the really hot new stuff that has just faded into the background when it turned out to be not so hot after all, and b) looking at the evolutionary durability of some of the cockroaches and dinosaurs that were supposed to be superseded by the aforesaid hot new stuff. I started coding in Fortran. I still write quick-and-dirty stuff in Fortran from time to time, although most of the time I use VB or C#. A friend of mine writes in COBOL.NET. My current project uses ASP.NET. In between I have used at least a dozen different assembly languages, macro translators, and procedural languages, plus a pile of graphical design tools. I have seen a lot of boutique languages come and go in that time. I can't even remember the names of most of them, even though they were surely going to be the ultimate tool at the time. Hardware has gone down in price from over $1.00/byte to 0.1 microbuck/byte. Speed has gone from 20 uSec/cycle on a machine that used 6 cycles per instruction to pipelined dual processors that run instructions in parallel at over 5 billion instructions per second. I missed the relay generation completely, and just got in on the tail end of the vacuum tube generation. The Fortran run-time package on the IBM 1620 occupied 400 6-bit characters out of a 20,000 character memory. I added line printer control to the package at a cost of 200 additional characters. When IBM added disk drives to the system the thing bloated up to 1400 characters or thereabouts. When we got a 360/40 with disks and tape the operating system grew to occupy an astonishing 6000 bytes. I started doing real-times systems with the IBM 1710, which was a 1620 with interrupts and analog and digital I/O. Now the power of that system can be yours for about $6. I could go on, but no one wants to listen to an old guy ramble.
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The interesting part is a) looking back at all the really hot new stuff that has just faded into the background when it turned out to be not so hot after all, and b) looking at the evolutionary durability of some of the cockroaches and dinosaurs that were supposed to be superseded by the aforesaid hot new stuff. I started coding in Fortran. I still write quick-and-dirty stuff in Fortran from time to time, although most of the time I use VB or C#. A friend of mine writes in COBOL.NET. My current project uses ASP.NET. In between I have used at least a dozen different assembly languages, macro translators, and procedural languages, plus a pile of graphical design tools. I have seen a lot of boutique languages come and go in that time. I can't even remember the names of most of them, even though they were surely going to be the ultimate tool at the time. Hardware has gone down in price from over $1.00/byte to 0.1 microbuck/byte. Speed has gone from 20 uSec/cycle on a machine that used 6 cycles per instruction to pipelined dual processors that run instructions in parallel at over 5 billion instructions per second. I missed the relay generation completely, and just got in on the tail end of the vacuum tube generation. The Fortran run-time package on the IBM 1620 occupied 400 6-bit characters out of a 20,000 character memory. I added line printer control to the package at a cost of 200 additional characters. When IBM added disk drives to the system the thing bloated up to 1400 characters or thereabouts. When we got a 360/40 with disks and tape the operating system grew to occupy an astonishing 6000 bytes. I started doing real-times systems with the IBM 1710, which was a 1620 with interrupts and analog and digital I/O. Now the power of that system can be yours for about $6. I could go on, but no one wants to listen to an old guy ramble.
Dear Jim, In fact, me and I am sure many others would sure have found your post as an interesting thing to learn. It gives insight to something that we have (I am 23 yrs right now) neither seen nor heard. Please don't feel bad if someone could not show interest in learning rather listening your experience. I would like to continue with your say.
Jwalant Soneji (BE IT) Mobile: +91 9969059127 http://jnsoneji.spaces.live.com http://jnsoneji.blogspot.com
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Hello, Just wanted to know if there are people out there willing to complete their lives in programming, in other words, how do you plan your career vs. your age, I have seen developers aged at 40s and 50s, do you think that the one should quit development at a certain age and shift to technical consultations or project management, and if you are old, and still into code, does this make you small or big ( I think it varies from one country to another ) ? Please share your experience here !
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
I'm 13 and I'm programming for Windows (VS 2008), Linux and the Nintendo DS. I'll defenitly investigate programming as my career, because I enjoy it and I don't think you can ever be "too old" (or too young) to do anything!
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Hello, Just wanted to know if there are people out there willing to complete their lives in programming, in other words, how do you plan your career vs. your age, I have seen developers aged at 40s and 50s, do you think that the one should quit development at a certain age and shift to technical consultations or project management, and if you are old, and still into code, does this make you small or big ( I think it varies from one country to another ) ? Please share your experience here !
Kareem Shaker http://cairocafe.blogspot.com
If you're 35 and still programming you should be begging for someone to shoot you! Just kidding. I'm 68 and still slinging code professionally. I've professionally programmed in C, C++ (including MFC and Borland OWL), Perl, Java, FORTRAN, Ada, LISP, and assembly on several computers. My first computer program was written in octal on a Control Data 1604 in 1964. If you're creative and like to work on new stuff, there is no better career. However, you have to keep your senses sharp to see the next big thing and prepare yourself to take advantage of it. If you want to stay technical, it is hard to advance without an advanced degree. Just learning the next new language is insufficient. You need the ability to design an entire system that meets customer needs (not just requirements).