Programming is not a long term career
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Oakman wrote:
he 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
Who is "R. A. H."? Curious because I'm stealing this tagline and need to know if someone asks me.
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To those of you who program for a living, look around. How many programmers do you see who are older than 30? Older than 35? Older than 40? It's my guess that, as you proceed through the increasing ages, you will find fewer and fewer hands-on programmers. So what's that mean to younger programmers, say, in their twenties? I believe that it means that programming is not a long term career path. As programmers become older, they fall prey to the niceties of management (carpets, big desk, a door that closes, etc.). And as a result, fewer and fewer programmers have gray hair. Maybe a lot of managers do but few programmers do. I'm a lucky one. I continue to program. And I'm old! But I think I bring a far ranging experience to the table. I am cautioning young programmers to beware. Although you may think it is, programming is not a long term career.
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To those of you who program for a living, look around. How many programmers do you see who are older than 30? Older than 35? Older than 40? It's my guess that, as you proceed through the increasing ages, you will find fewer and fewer hands-on programmers. So what's that mean to younger programmers, say, in their twenties? I believe that it means that programming is not a long term career path. As programmers become older, they fall prey to the niceties of management (carpets, big desk, a door that closes, etc.). And as a result, fewer and fewer programmers have gray hair. Maybe a lot of managers do but few programmers do. I'm a lucky one. I continue to program. And I'm old! But I think I bring a far ranging experience to the table. I am cautioning young programmers to beware. Although you may think it is, programming is not a long term career.
Like gggustafson, I have worked in the computer arena for a LONG time, 35 years. From my perspective, one starts with a calling, the purpose God created you for and empowers you to accomplish. To accomplish your calling, there are major track(s), your career(s), to be followed. These are your short- and long-range plans, to include milestones of accomplishment. A job is the immediate activity your are carrying out as you move toward your next milestone. From this perspective, one does not see any job, nor even career, as the only thing one will engage in during one's life. Rather, they are means to an end. So, yes, programming is not something one should plan on doing for the rest of one's life. Still, one does not have to depart the computer arena. After all these years, I am still working as an in-demand technical professional. Here is the general track my career has taken: - told what to do and how to do it - given problems to solve - expected to figure out what problems to solve - form and lead teams in discovering and resolving difficult problems Two other tracks are mentioned in a slide from a talk of mine: http://informationanthology.net/CareerMentor/ConcerningSuccessfulCareers_Thursday/Slide7.JPG[^] Growth entails risk. All moves in life must consider that risk and account for it.
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Joe Simes wrote:
I'm 46 and I have no aspirations to management so I guess I'm stuck as the greybeard programmer!
You're barely into middle age. I'm 68.
The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
Oakman wrote:
You're barely into middle age. I'm 68.
Depends on your point of view. I outraged a 27 year old coworker by telling her I entered middle age on my 25th birthday. My view? Life expectency is 75, youth= 0-25, middle age= 25-50, old age= 50-75, 75+= bonus time. Just because you are 10 years my senior, we are still both in old age. There is no rule you have to ACT old! I'm hoping to be fit enough to be tearing around corners on the back of a carriage when I'm 80+
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Most programmers are young because most programming jobs have been around for less than 10 years. Honestly, how many programmers do you think it took to run the world before the web, before dot.coms, before there were 3 PCs in every house and every car had a dozen microcontrollers? In 1981, when I went to work, there were about 14,000 people doing programming full time in the US (according to EE Times). Now there are something like 3 million. That said, age discrimination is a huge problem in programming. Managers who are themselves young programmers don't perceive the value of experience. They put a premium instead on knowing this years' wizzy new language or API, because that's their own personal strength, and we always like to hire ourselves, because we are so very smart. Consequently, while the best programmers are about ten times as productive as the worst ones, the salary range is only about 2x. Programming is becoming like nursing; a great paying job right out of school, but 20 years later you're making the same wage, and new hires make as much as you do. Programming is a very portable job. All you need is a $400 laptop and the Internet. So the competition is worldwide. The workforce in India and China is even younger than it is here, mostly having been educated since about 2001. That's going to keep wages down. We seem to be a variable cost too. When the economy turns down, no new dev projects start up for 2 years. If you are standing up when the music stops, you're screwed. If you're on a project, you don't even notice the downturn because you're working nights and weekends and the money is good. The urge to become a manager == the urge to make more money next year than last year, to feed your growing family or growing obsession with stuff. Same thing for the urge to leave programming and do something else. The real question is, why would even a young person want to enter the profession? The answer needs to be, "Because you're geeky and you love to write code." If the answer was, "I heard the wages are great and you can get rich at some startup.", then I wish you good luck. Save money for your behavioral health therapist, 'cause you're heading for one hellacious midlife crisis. []
From my personal experience, your claim that "In 1981, when I went to work, there were about 14,000 people doing programming full time in the US (according to EE Times)." is flawed. In 1981, CSC employed more people than that.
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I love programming but I think the context is important. If I had to choose between writing javascript for the next 30 years or managing others to do that, I'm choosing management.
What do you have against JavaScript? I started with a bit of Basic, moved oder to C++, then Pascal, then JavaScript, then something more exotic (LotusScript), but at the same time Java and some more JavaScript, switched over to .Net, then Java, and am now back on C++. Of all of these, I'm the least productive in C++ (any language requiring manual mem mgmt reduces your speed by 50%), and I'm fastest with JavaScript. In fact, JavaScript is very nicely usable as a functional language, provided you know how to use it, and has a nicer and easier readable syntax than Lisp (but I still use it more like classical OO, I'm just abusing closures now and then). And yes, there's no other language (among the ones I enumerated) that lets you introduce bugs as easily, as long as you're sloppy - it has a very flexible syntax, and as such accepts even constructions you wouldn't expect it to grok, just not the way you'd want it to. And btw, I'm a bit over 41, and don't even think of moving over to management.
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I'm below 50 and coding like my fingers are on fire, I can run circles around newbies and it's all down to experience. The more experience you gain the better and easier the job becomes. I have an intern in my office at the moment (he's 20), he can't believe I have solutions for every problem he encounters. I doubt I'll be hanging my coding keyboard up for a long time, if fact I'll still be coding until I retire. The only problem I see for the future is that the internet has allowed it to become easier to program (sites like CP make it easy), the wages will drop to a point where it won't be worth programming for a living unless you have a niche technology. I wouldn't recommend programming for a living if you're young, things are changing.
www.software-kinetics.co.uk Wear a hard hat it's under construction
Idunno ... do you think there are that many smart ppl out there who want to become programmers? I have constantly seen bad code over the last 15+ years, everywhere I had an opportunity to look at code. I don't think good programmers will ever become a commodity.
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To those of you who program for a living, look around. How many programmers do you see who are older than 30? Older than 35? Older than 40? It's my guess that, as you proceed through the increasing ages, you will find fewer and fewer hands-on programmers. So what's that mean to younger programmers, say, in their twenties? I believe that it means that programming is not a long term career path. As programmers become older, they fall prey to the niceties of management (carpets, big desk, a door that closes, etc.). And as a result, fewer and fewer programmers have gray hair. Maybe a lot of managers do but few programmers do. I'm a lucky one. I continue to program. And I'm old! But I think I bring a far ranging experience to the table. I am cautioning young programmers to beware. Although you may think it is, programming is not a long term career.
I have been doing application design and programming for over 30 years and I love what I do. I can't classify myself as a graybeard programmer as I am female. But I have earned every non-red hair on my head. I truly feel that the years of experience and range of projects I h ave worked on give me a rich knowledgebase to draw from. I have worked free-lance and for corporate teams. I am at the best of both worlds now. Working for a large company, but outside of IT and with the freedom to work "outside of the box" and to determine my own development strategies. I love it!! I have thought about going into management, but I like the design and coding too much. I feel the real challenge is to be constantly learning and trying new things. I see this as a long-term career as I would not want to do anything else until I retire.
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Oakman wrote:
he 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
Who is "R. A. H."? Curious because I'm stealing this tagline and need to know if someone asks me.
Robert Anson Heinlein, one of or perhaps simply the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century. He wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, and the novels of the same name which were the basis for Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters, along with around 30 other books. Some of his other quotes: One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority. TANSTAAFL (The acronym, not the words they stand for) A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased — he hates all creative people equally. A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future. Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
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To those of you who program for a living, look around. How many programmers do you see who are older than 30? Older than 35? Older than 40? It's my guess that, as you proceed through the increasing ages, you will find fewer and fewer hands-on programmers. So what's that mean to younger programmers, say, in their twenties? I believe that it means that programming is not a long term career path. As programmers become older, they fall prey to the niceties of management (carpets, big desk, a door that closes, etc.). And as a result, fewer and fewer programmers have gray hair. Maybe a lot of managers do but few programmers do. I'm a lucky one. I continue to program. And I'm old! But I think I bring a far ranging experience to the table. I am cautioning young programmers to beware. Although you may think it is, programming is not a long term career.
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What do you have against JavaScript? I started with a bit of Basic, moved oder to C++, then Pascal, then JavaScript, then something more exotic (LotusScript), but at the same time Java and some more JavaScript, switched over to .Net, then Java, and am now back on C++. Of all of these, I'm the least productive in C++ (any language requiring manual mem mgmt reduces your speed by 50%), and I'm fastest with JavaScript. In fact, JavaScript is very nicely usable as a functional language, provided you know how to use it, and has a nicer and easier readable syntax than Lisp (but I still use it more like classical OO, I'm just abusing closures now and then). And yes, there's no other language (among the ones I enumerated) that lets you introduce bugs as easily, as long as you're sloppy - it has a very flexible syntax, and as such accepts even constructions you wouldn't expect it to grok, just not the way you'd want it to. And btw, I'm a bit over 41, and don't even think of moving over to management.
Florin Jurcovici wrote:
What do you have against JavaScript?
After working with Silverlight and C#... javascript just seems like an ancient half language. er script. Things like it not caring about variable typing, but silently accepting and failing if I set a hidden field using .Value instead of .value. Did you want that to work? Too bad. Javascript is my least favorite language to use. I rank it somewhere behind VB6.
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Albert Holguin wrote:
older programmers... you know, the ones that look like serial killers...
Hey I resemble that remark! :) Seriously I'm 46 and I have no aspirations to management so I guess I'm stuck as the greybeard programmer! My boss hates that the only thing I put on my IDP (Individual Development Plan) is Mo' Money!! :-D
The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa. - Orson Scott Card
Ha. Wait until you start putting "planning for retirement" on all your development plans.
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What do you have against JavaScript? I started with a bit of Basic, moved oder to C++, then Pascal, then JavaScript, then something more exotic (LotusScript), but at the same time Java and some more JavaScript, switched over to .Net, then Java, and am now back on C++. Of all of these, I'm the least productive in C++ (any language requiring manual mem mgmt reduces your speed by 50%), and I'm fastest with JavaScript. In fact, JavaScript is very nicely usable as a functional language, provided you know how to use it, and has a nicer and easier readable syntax than Lisp (but I still use it more like classical OO, I'm just abusing closures now and then). And yes, there's no other language (among the ones I enumerated) that lets you introduce bugs as easily, as long as you're sloppy - it has a very flexible syntax, and as such accepts even constructions you wouldn't expect it to grok, just not the way you'd want it to. And btw, I'm a bit over 41, and don't even think of moving over to management.
Florin Jurcovici wrote:
I'm the least productive in C++ (any language requiring manual mem mgmt reduces your speed by 50%)
This is what annoys me about most older people programming in c++. They want to do manual memory management. Its not C, its C++, use RAII. Futhermore, theres already plenty of smart pointer classes in the C++ standard library to take care of memory for you.
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Oakman wrote:
You're barely into middle age. I'm 68.
Depends on your point of view. I outraged a 27 year old coworker by telling her I entered middle age on my 25th birthday. My view? Life expectency is 75, youth= 0-25, middle age= 25-50, old age= 50-75, 75+= bonus time. Just because you are 10 years my senior, we are still both in old age. There is no rule you have to ACT old! I'm hoping to be fit enough to be tearing around corners on the back of a carriage when I'm 80+
KP Lee wrote:
There is no rule you have to ACT old!
Agreed. But you will find, especially during the years after 60, that your body does start to wear down. On my last checkup, my doctor told me that I couldn't expect to continue a life of wine, women and song forever - so I stopped singing.
The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
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To those of you who program for a living, look around. How many programmers do you see who are older than 30? Older than 35? Older than 40? It's my guess that, as you proceed through the increasing ages, you will find fewer and fewer hands-on programmers. So what's that mean to younger programmers, say, in their twenties? I believe that it means that programming is not a long term career path. As programmers become older, they fall prey to the niceties of management (carpets, big desk, a door that closes, etc.). And as a result, fewer and fewer programmers have gray hair. Maybe a lot of managers do but few programmers do. I'm a lucky one. I continue to program. And I'm old! But I think I bring a far ranging experience to the table. I am cautioning young programmers to beware. Although you may think it is, programming is not a long term career.
gggustafson wrote:
I believe that it means that programming is not a long term career path.
Aw, but it is, just not for everyone. To me, it's a perfect long-term career path; one is always learning :)
gggustafson wrote:
So what's that mean to younger programmers, say, in their twenties?
There's a lot more of them, then there was of us in our time; there weren't that much programmers to begin with. Our base grew with the introduction of Delphi, VB6 and Java, but it exploded once .NET and mobile apps came into view.
gggustafson wrote:
As programmers become older, they fall prey to the niceties of management (carpets, big desk, a door that closes, etc.).
A programmer is still that, whatever his/her role in the organization is.
gggustafson wrote:
I am cautioning young programmers to beware.
Caution is always a good thing :)
gggustafson wrote:
Although you may think it is, programming is not a long term career.
It's a good start; structured problem-solving, logic and patience come in handy in every trade. And yes, some stay long enough to grow a grey beard. But no, it's not a form of retirement, if that's what you mean ;P
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss:
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Robert Anson Heinlein, one of or perhaps simply the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century. He wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, and the novels of the same name which were the basis for Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters, along with around 30 other books. Some of his other quotes: One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority. TANSTAAFL (The acronym, not the words they stand for) A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased — he hates all creative people equally. A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future. Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
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I've been doing it since 1980, and actually being paid to do it since 1982. I imagine I'll be doing this until I'm 70 or so. My dad had been an electrician for about 60 years, and only recently had to quit wehen he had a stroke last September. Most programmers are mmoved into management positions between 35 and 40, and that's why you don't see that many old programmers. Me? I hate people, so management isn't exactly the right career path for me. For the most part, people leave me alone and let me write code, and I'm fine with that.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I hate people, so management isn't exactly the right career path for me.
I think you've misstated slightly here. You hate assholes, and part of management is dealing with assholes in a way that achieves the objective. I have a feeling your preferred mode for doing so doesn't accommodate all the options that most managers use (ass-kissing up the hierarchy, ass-wiping down). Brutal honesty and a straightforward expression of your opinion don't fit well in that environment. This isn't a criticism, btw. I have the same view toward management (and becoming a manager), and I like people. I've only had one coworker in my 30-year career that I genuinely despised.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
The reason you don't see 'old' programmers is because programming itself isn't really that old.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
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Those were all him? Okay, now I feel like an idiot as I'm a SF fan and can quote several of both Asimov's and -- ironically -- Heinlien's books. Obviously, I need to reread my Heinlien.
Take a look at "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" if you don't know it - 'tis my personal favorite
The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.
