I don't think bootcamps turn out lower quality developers and I don't think they will drive wages down. Currently they are web focused but I think the bootcamp style is far better at teaching programming/computer information then the current university enviroment. We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP).
>We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP).
Most of those fields seem pretty advanced (can't speak for DSP or trading, but realtime and embedded software both seem fairly intimidating to me). Do you feel that someone totally green to software would be able to ramp up in the time advertised by the average bootcamp (2-3 months)?
why is it artificial? Credentials are everywhere. You need credentials to be an account, a physician, a teacher, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, a (insert various iteration of crazy welding techniques) welder, a steel fabricator (AISC), a child services worker, heavy machinery operator, if you are an engineer and want to work for the public, you have to get licensed, and the list can go on and on. And I am really, really thankful that the above jobs require credentials.
Some of those are only at the discretion of the employer/commissioner. For instance, your teacher and engineer examples. When the government is the employer, they have decided they want to hire only within the pool of those who have certain credentials. If you want to hire someone for private works, you are free to make your own choices and suffer the consequences if you choose wrongly. I think it is fair to say that is not artificial. That is market choice.
Some of your other examples, like lawyers and dentists, however do seem artificial. There is no legal option to hire someone without credentials (at least in the jurisdictions I am close to), even when the buyer understands the risks and poses no external risk to others.
I don't know about this heavy machinery thing. As a farmer, all I need to drive my 30,000 lbs. (when dry) combine down the road is a standard automobile license, and nothing at all once I'm off the public roads. Nobody thinks twice about that. Even more curiously, I do not need any credentials to produce food that people willingly stick into their mouth! You'd think that would be orders of magnitude more worrisome than many of the other careers you pointed out – especially given the difficulty of tracing food origins as a consumer – yet nobody bats an eye.
I think the difference is that credentials as a doctor, lawyer, dentist, chiropractor, etc. tend to be all-encompassing for those professions. In software, credentialing is extremely narrow (i.e. credentials for subsets of Cisco's offerings, or Microsoft's). Other than college degrees, there really isn't any type of broad credentialing available in the computer industry. Credentials are also short-lived. Does anybody really care if someone is a C.N.E. anymore?
Computer credentials are also a for-profit business model, rather than an organized body that ensures a certain degree of competency is met. For example, being a board certified physician requires a lot more than simply passing a bubble test, which is what a lot of credentials in the computer industry consist of.
I think credentialing does demonstrate a certain degree of competency, but it also does create an artificial scarcity, since many, many, many people out there have the same skills, or better, but just don't feel the need to obtain credentials.
The credentials you mention fall into three kinds:
1. Credentials Legally Required: Lawyers, Doctors, etc.
Credentials and accredited schooling are required in these disciplines because they involve specialized knowledge AND because misuse or malpractice can seriously hurt people. Even then, there's plenty of cartel-like behavior going on. For example, the U.S. system of accrediting lawyers (three years of graduate school plus bar exam) is almost certainly overkill.
2. Specialized Technical Skills: Welders, Trades
Welding, fabricating, etc. require specialized skills and knowledge. These skills are taught in trade schools and through apprenticeships, not four-year colleges. The credentials are usually not LEGALLY required to work in the area - you can hire a welder who doesn't have one - but in practice, you want to hire people with the credentials because they probably know what they're doing.
3. Non-Technical Skills: Teachers, Social Workers
Teachers, child services workers, etc. Here I think the argument for credentials is the weakest. Why do we NEED accredited teachers? For centuries we've had teachers who never had one, and even now, many private schools don't require credentials. In fact, some of the best teachers I had in school never had teaching degrees - they had degrees and experience in the relevant field (say, chemistry) and came to teach. In fact, in some of these fields, the credentials are attempts to form bars to entry, thus protecting the existing members of the profession - just why do we need school + certificates for hair dressers?
So where does software engineering fall? I think the second category is where it belongs, and bootcamps are attempts to create the kind of technical training / apprenticeship that exists in the trades. That doesn't mean official CS degrees are worthless - far from it - but it also means that we don't need any bars to entry for people who decided to learn coding in another way.
That's a very non-inclusive way of thinking, and it is hard to imagine that it benefits the community as a whole. What if you substituted developers, in this situation, for doctors?
I'd rather die of an abscessed tooth than visit a doctor out of whatever the equivalent of bootcamps would be. I'm grateful to society I don't have to.
Not me. If some quack who went to a six month "doctor bootcamp" can remove the abscessed tooth that would otherwise kill me, I'd hand him the pliers and beg for help.
doctor bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and healthcare quality down. As someone that values quality healthcare that sounds pretty scary...
Actually, the equivalent of bootcamps does exist in the medical realm.
For example, a dentist can take a six-week course on breast augmentations, and then perform boob jobs on the side. There are many "cosmetic surgeons" out there who are dentists, ENTs, and general practitioners, who have no formal training in plastic surgery. That's why it is important to look for a board certified plastic surgeon, rather than a board certified dentist who does plastic surgery.
Wait, why is it the ideal to be inclusive of bootcamp-people in the profession, especially when it's typically people just seeing dev as a way to get more money from work?
Collaboration in engineering is hard enough without having to deal with someone that forces a git push, is comically overconfident in their solutions, or exhibits any number of traits I've found to be common from people coming from the "learn a trade in a hurry" programs.
Not really comparable. Becoming a doctor has a knowledge base literally thousands of years old. Web development, 2 decades at best (50 years to cover all of computing), ~5 years at worst. Modern society has tempered a doctor track to take well over a decade (as it should, we're dealing with the human body). Becoming a web developer? 12 weeks according to these bootcamps. They also aren't cramming a "proper" 4 year CS education into that amount of time.
I feel like this is a common fear in many disciplines. Clinical psychology PhD's thinking PsyD's reduce the quality/wages of their profession (this was a huge contention among psych professors during undergrad), MD's thinking expanded practice privileges for NP's or PA's reduce quality/wages of their profession (and related, anesthesiologists worrying that CRNA's and AA's reduce their wages), PhD-educated machine learning/CS experts worrying that 2-year online data science masters reduce the quality/wages of their profession, etc. I mean, I have the same fear in many ways. Just pointing it out because I find it interesting. I guess the question is - is it reality or not?
Sure - at this time wages are high and it's a fear. 5, at most 10, years from now it will be reality. I'm willing to set a reminder on my calendar and revisit this thread.
> bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down
I'm not sure that's true, other than the obvious issue of supply vs. demand, where wages are concerned. As for quality, I've worked with college-trained programmers who wrote awful code, and I've worked with self-taught programmers who wrote amazing code. Some of the best programmers I've ever worked with were self-taught.
I never attended a bootcamp, but I have mentored for Rails Girls, Girl Develop It, and a bootcamp or two. In my experience, bootcamps are good places to learn how to write certain types of code. They don't help much in the way of theory, algorithms, or other low-level details, but for teaching people how to write typical business applications, they are a pretty good place to start, I think.
I also think bootcamps are good at weeding out those with no aptitude or desire for programming. My wife attended a bootcamp, and there were two types of people who attended with her. Those who took the task seriously, studied the materials, read the books, and practiced, practiced, practiced, and those who thought that paying the $5,000 to $10,000 was all the effort they had to apply, and that someone else would magically load their minds with the requisite information, once they had achieved that monetary apex. The first types got jobs. The latter types did not.
As long as you still have a working memory, you can learn anything at any age, I don't go along with this 'old-dog-can't-learn-new-tricks' thinking. Though obviously when you're younger it's markedly easier to pick up a new skill.
It does take longer for many people to learn new things when they are 50-60 though.
I do think we have to be realistic about the issue that many people who learned and performed complex intellectual skills in their 20s/30s no longer perform this kind of ability to pivot in their 50s/60s; to learn a new craft that depends on learning a lot of new information/skills.
Of course this doesn't mean that all people in their 50s/60s are like this. Like this post illustrates.
Speaking as a 43-year old, while I do have some health issues that I didn't have in my 20's, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, I find learning new things as easy as it's ever been. And I honestly don't think I am unusual in that regard.
I have a much wider framework of accumulated knowledge than I did 20 years ago, and leveraging that, I can see how wider parts of systems interrelate with a clarity that I never came close to touching in my youth.
Perhaps this too will fade in another 20 years, but so far I'm actually enjoying having a middle-aged mind. I can accomplish so much more than I could before.
As a person in the 50-60 year range, I can say that learning new things is a mixed bag for me. When I was young I was like Velcro, throw information at me and it stuck. Now only the important information stays with me. I wish I could have learned that in my twenties. I would not have a head full of useless information...
One advantage of being older is I tend to have a more seasoned perspective of what's important and whats not important in the long run.
Everyone has their own definition of important. I would like to think that after writing software for 30 years I have a decent knowledge of what my customers value.
So for me, reliability, scalability, and ease of use are more important than whether a language supports tail recursion and dynamic typing.
I certainly agree with you there. Cutting the Gordian Knot of overly-complex software salad, and deploying only what my customer needs, while keeping it simple and robust, is how I pay my bills.
I'm about the same age and feel the same way. In my 20's I would actually avoid learning something because "I know that stuff already" (Spoiler: I didn't) Now I'm thirsty for new knowledge, and much more willing to admit when I don't know something.
The difference between you and a 20 year old might be measurable, but negligible, when it comes to pure learning. IE you're both learning a task, subject, skill neither of you has knowledge or experience about.
Clearly experience and knowledge has great value, and coupled with any normal sort of learning ability is a solid combination that is superior to increased learning alone.
After all small children can learn amazingly fast compared to adults. But without knowledge and experience to see how to use what they learn or how to combine it to get new ideas they're at a disadvantage.
I mean as a software developer at 35 I know a lot more than I did at 20. I was able to learn pretty quick back then, starting from scratch. I can learn pretty quick now. But with the advantage of knowledge and experience, I'm really only learning a couple of new things at a time to add to an already immense store of knowledge, so yeah it's easy. One new thing and I can see right where it fits into my existing knowledge. It's kind of a different ballgame now compared to when I was 20 when I was still getting a handle on the basics.
Baeocystin - I fit that bill. I am 63. I can learn still but my ability grasp really complex random info has fallen off. My ability to learn info that I am passionate about not so much.
I have learned what I can learn and how to learn. In college I could retain a lot for a little time period. Today my short term memory for syntax is not so good. In the book dyslexic advantage[1] they state that dyslexic's short term memory is not as good as the general population but our conceptual memory / ability to visualize is heightened. I am dyslexic and find this to be true. So I learn concepts and thank google every day for syntax.
I think the 'learning how to learn' skill is possibly the most important one a person can possess, but by its very nature, it isn't something that comes without long practice. I know I can think of how I approached study in my late teens/early 20's with a shiver at my poor choices.
I do IT work for small business owners. One of the things that I've noticed over the years is that the number of successful small businesses that are run by dyslexics is much higher than you would expect from the %/population numbers. And it is clear to me that it is their ability to conceptualize what the business needs, visualize how to move forward, and (perhaps most importantly) comfort in delegating tasks that plays a large role in their success.
Which works well for me, too. I may not be dyslexic, but I quite enjoy their work style.
I'm not saying you're wrong and 43 is still fairly young (I'm only 35) so it's possible even if there was a difference that it could still be negligible and there's all sorts variables that go into how well people learn as they get older.
But you could be wrong. Can you really accurately track how well you learn on a day to day basis over a lifetime? Doubtful. Even if you could really only learn 85% as well as you did when you were 20 it would be a measurable difference objectively. But subjectively that decline would be so minimal from one day to the next you would have a hard time noticing the decline. And since you still feel sharp at 43, and you felt sharp at 20, well nothing has changed, even though it clearly has.
Also some people just lie to themselves about how capable they (still) are. If you've ever dealt with an aging relative who was losing their vision but resistant to giving up driving. Or in the beginning stages of dementia but was in denial about it. Human beings will generally do anything to avoid admitting declining abilities of any sort. Or they will temper an admission with a but of some sort. It's just part of the experience.
You bring up a point about experience. Knowledge and experience have value too, obviously. After all young children can learn faster than adults period, but they don't know anything yet, and that's a disadvantage. And being able to learn a little bit better isn't so attractive that you'd be willing to give up all your accumulated experience. I wouldn't either.
But I am sure I can share that experience with a 20 something with no knowledge about software development and they'll pick it up much faster than my 60 something mother with no knowledge and software development. And that's where the learning bit comes in. And learning one more thing in a subject you're already an expert in, isn't really a tall order. Starting from scratch, like most children or young adults have to do is a greater feat and put on the same playing field, in a subject where you really have no experience or expertise, you might find the competition a little stiffer than you remember it being than when you were a kid. Still at 43 you're still young, but at 53? 63? 73? At some point there will probably be some obvious differences in your abilities that just become more stark as you age, even if you fare amazingly well against your peers in the same age group.
Research that seems to support that people who spend a lot of energy on learning and thinking and doing mentally demanding activities do better cognitively in their old age. I hope it's true, and specifically I hope it's true in my case.
If age hasn't proven to be an impediment for learning yet I just wouldn't worry about it. And even if things get tougher to learn as you get older it's not boolean, you can still learn things if you put the effort in, if you still want to learn it. Being less capable != incapable. This isn't a scenario where any position other than #1 is tied with last place, or first place loser, or any other sort of trope you want.
I can honestly say that I have an easier time learning anything now than when I was in my 20's. Any subject, whether it's new to me or not.
The only deficit I've noticed is that an unexpected distraction affects me more, and it takes me a little longer to get back in to the groove. Whether this is because of my brain, or simply because the things that distract me (I heard a thump, did my Dad fall down? Do I need to call an ambulance?) are more serious than what distracted me in college, I cannot say. Probably both.
The only thing I will say in my defense is that I was a caregiver while my Mother descended through the hell that is Alzheimer's; I am intimately familiar with failure modes of the brain.
I also had my Dad move in with me after my Mom passed. He is mentally competent, but very stubborn about his hearing and other deficits.
This causes a tremendous amount of frustration on my part, and I have promised myself to never lie to myself about my changing abilities, no matter what.
Can I do so? Hopefully. Clearly I can't guarantee such a thing, but I'm used to having to work around health issues. I'm asthmatic, and have pretty severe IBS, which is an awful thing I wish on no one. If I am grateful for one aspect of it, it has taught me to respect my physical abilities and limits, no matter what they are, or what I wish them to be.
44. My memory is definitely a little worse than when young, and I think I've probably slowed down somewhat in the absolute sense. But I also have 21 years of experience to build on, which is quite the accelerator.
New tech is frequently old concepts applied in a new way. Once you recognize those core concepts and can find older analogies, you're way ahead. In the end it's a net gain.
How much of it is age, and how much of it is having kids along with an established routine?
I find it pretty easy to learn things, just not when I'm interrupted by the kids. There's no reason why at 36 I can't listen to lectures about philosophy or read a bit about some new tech. What's hard is getting focused time to do a proper project, because my time outside of work hours is taken up by parenting.
Lack of uninterrupted time for learning and experimentation is a real issue if you have a family. I ended up paying to attend a General Assembly JavaScript class recently because while I could easily have learned the material on my own for free, I couldn't guarantee having regular blocks of time to engage with the material otherwise.
"I think we have to be realistic about" is, whether you intend it or not, an attempt to reframe the discussion around your particular set of priors. We need to be careful about language like that.
There are many reasons to challenge the assumption that it's difficult for older people to learn to code:
* It's may not be valid to extrapolate from more general neuroplasticity findings to programming
* It may be that changes in neuroplasticity affect the effectiveness of different modalities of learning, so that it's not so much that it's harder for older people to learn coding, but that they might need to use different strategies to learn --- for instance, 20 year olds might be able to get away with rote memorization as a crutch, and older adults might need to use more authentic learning strategies
* It's also possible that for large numbers of adults, learning to code is easier, because their brains have been trained through work they've done throughout their careers
* It's also the case that there isn't one "programming", but rather a whole constellation of different skills, some of which reward an orientation towards organization and careful planning, some of which reward tenacity, some of which reward creative and intuitive thinking, some of which reward numeracy, and so on
We should be very careful about generalizing, because one thing we do know is that human brains have incredibly powerful cognitive biases that are working constantly to fill in the blanks in our knowledge --- particularly about our models of the behavior and capabilities of other humans --- and much of what it fills in is accurate only up to the point where it allows us to effectively collect berries and hunt gazelles and stuff.
For whatever it's worth: I'm 40, not 50, but the tempo at which I've been learning new things is accelerating, not decelerating: I work in more languages now, I work in more problem domains (for instance, I never used to do any front-end work), and in particular my math --- which has always been awful --- has been improving by leaps and bounds. Maybe things will suddenly suck for me when I turn 50, but the current trends are not worrying me.
I'm skeptical of arguments based on neuroplasticity or learning styles for the following reason. Given how good people are at learning in general (it is the evolutionary advantage that humans have), it would in fact be extremely surprising if there was anything short of an illness that shut down somebody's ability to learn things. Thus ability to learn things, even when one is older, doesn't need an explanation, whereas inability to learn things does.
There's definitely research that suggests our ability to learn some things, like verbal languages, slows down with age --- though I wasn't able to find a cite for whether that decline is gradual or whether there's some inflection at adulthood. Either way, I'd just caution that we not automatically extrapolate from those findings to the broader claim that every new skill acquisition is similarly impacted.
Aren't languages really special, though? I remember reading one's ability to learn even new sounds almost vanishes, which explains many people's accents, and which means it's more like a separate process in the brain. Coding, on the other hand, is a general, abstract skill. So I'd expect ability to learn coding to drop off at roughly the same rate as everything else with age. I think it's one of those things where there is a small negative effect, but it's so small that even if you knew about it, you'd still have many much more important things to think about and so you'd be right to ignore it.
I think programming is comparatively easy to learn. I sometimes wish I had become a physician, but I don't think trying to learn that by myself (or in 21 days or whatever) would be a good idea.
With coding, a single good programming book for about 30$ can get you a long way...
I agree, programming is easier to learn than so many other things because of the short feedback loop, the available resources, and the willingness of those who are experienced to talk about what they've learned.
A big issue I have now is simply time; I think I could easily pick up new things (probably faster) but I no longer have the idle time to do it. You can learn anything but at some point you start prioritizing.
This appears to be an Ad for free code camp (not that there's anything wrong with that). Just ten years younger in a similar boat, I'm neither taking a boot camp, nor writing about my "CIS". To each their own. Learning is a life long activity. It shouldn't matter what one learns at any age.
Maybe I'm having trouble parsing your comment, but it is not readily apparent if you're critical or in support of the post. Could you clarify your statement?
Maybe he's just sharing first-thoughts.. not everyone feels compelled to immediately decide on their lightning-quick "critical/supportive" judgment as a top priority.
Perhaps it really is an ad, but if it is real, I am impressed that the person thinks at 56, he has enough runway in life to make a serious contribution by coding :-)...I like that attitude.
I'm growing old too and I find it hard to motivate myself to take up new things that are very long term -- somedays I wonder what is the point in learning a new programming language or framework and I am nowhere as old as him. Which is why I liked his attitude. It's refreshing and inspiring.
It's not unrealistic to suspect that at age 56 someone could code for 25 years or more. Retirement is more and more of a myth anyway these days...I mean social security ain't going to pay for a condo overlooking the 7th fairway and trips to Europe.
Obviously things are going to be tough as a 50s junior developer, but it sounds like you are up for the challenge. And hey, we all have to do something with the time we are here. It might as well be something you enjoy, challenges be damned.
I'd imagine by your 50s you'd have already learned the right attitude to succeed at anything: do the best you can, ask for help often and speak up right away when scope explodes!
Attitude is not the problem here, getting a job is. Few acquaintances of mine in their thirties also try to jump this developer bandwagon and it's very hard to get a junior position for them, because they are "too old" (of course, nobody says that directly). Actually, they started to get interviews only after had hidden years in their CVs (as per mine advice).
Which is quite funny when you consider many of us are using technology that is only a few years old and we are constantly told we shouldn't stop learning to have a career in programming.
At my age the main problem is that I read a lot in a computer screen and my eyes get tired. Recently I read in the last weak several books for learning Erlang and Elixir and one for refreshing ruby. Last month I learned java by doing several projects with netbeans. Initially I programmwd only with gedit and googling stack overflow. I was programming feom six pm to five am to help my son with a java project. Honestly helping him is not doing any good but not helping is not any better. Were my eyes and health stronger I think I could learng anything in little time. I learned the hard way failing one and again. You couldn't believe that I stumpled with all the walls before continuing along, bit what don't kill you make you stronger. Get ready for the next battle, we will win.
It helps me with the eye strain. Also I am starting to find myself returning to good ole paperback books for reading. Try printing out some code bases when ever you start getting more advanced you can actually learn a lot from studying code.
They make "computer glasses" that are supposed to help reduce eye strain associated with computer use. I don't personally use them so I can't say if they work, but it's probably worth it for you to look into them.
Computer glasses work great for me. I'm mildly myopic, but at 58 found I could no longer focus on desktop screens ~2 feet away. So I got computer eyeglasses (my normal prescription divided in half). They've made a huge difference. Everything's clear again. However my more myopic sister could never make hers work, so YMMV.
I'm generally OK with spec swapping, but I'm tempted to replace my primary glasses with bifocal/trifocal/progressives which in theory should end the swapping. I'm just not so sure I'd like tilting my head in order to change focus. :-/
I'm not sure computer glasses and the glasses you got are the same.
IIRC, computer glasses have a yellowish-amber tint to them, and possibly some coatings.
Like you, I got single vision glasses for computer use, but they don't have the tinting/coatings that computer glasses do.
I run a pair of 4K 27" monitors at 100% scaling (people who see my setup think I'm crazy), but I had my optometrist get me set up for a reading distance of 21" to 27" -- the closest and furthest points of my monitors -- for my glasses. My single vision prescription includes distance + adjustment for presbyopia, so it's great.
Have you tried plain old reading glasses? They made a world of difference for me. Your vision can be 20/20 and you still can't see things well close enough to read (that's my own case).
That's the way to go. They're just prescription glasses which are optimized for the working distance of a computer screen (or whatever your workplace happens to be).
You measure your working distance at your desk, take the number with you to the optometrist, and they'll dial-in a prescription that works best for that distance.
After many years of trying, I finally convinced my wife to learn Ruby and Javascript a couple of years ago (we're both almost 50). She complained about many of the same negatives that the author mentions in his article (which is why it took so long to convince her to try), so I think he's on point with his internal criticisms. I think he's also on point with his rebuttals.
In my wife's case, a large tech company hired her as a junior developer, and she's been doing great. In an industry where it is fairly common for employees to leave after two or three years (if not sooner), I don't think any employer is overly concerned that they'll only get a handful of years out of an employee. They'll most likely get less than that out of a 20-year-old.
At 51, I've noticed there are really two kinds of people at my age... people who are completely beaten, and people who are winning. Once you hit 40 or so, the scope of mortality really hits you. You realize that you've probably already had half your productive life, maybe half a career. You start seeing peers die of "old age" - heart attacks and strokes and stuff.
For most, they're beaten, defeated. They decide this is all there is, and they're going to ride out their remaining years doing as little as possible other than wallowing in regret and yelling at kids to get off their damn lawn. It's sad and terrible. I can hardly bear to be around a lot of people who were so vital when they were young.
The others, though... they see the clock on the wall. They know that, at best, life is more than half over for them already. They have a limited amount of time. They're the ones ticking things off their bucket list. They understand their priorities. Now, you may not understand just how important it is to them to start a new business, or grow the perfect tomato, or travel through China, but they get it in a deep way, much deeper than most 20-somethings can imagine.
You really, really want to work with people like this if you can. They're brilliant.
I think it's more complicated than that. I often feel beaten and defeated. That doesn't stop me from being a life long learner. I'm sure there are people who are perfectly content with their lives and they just don't feel the need to learn new things.
Well, sure, it's an oversimplification. But I think it's a pretty valid one. It's not just about learning new things (you don't even need to learn to be on the winning side - I know artists who are driven to create, who have already refined their technique and are focused on creativity now).
Yeah, this. :( My ability to stop working for The Man and start my own company has been severely hampered by the need to pay my mortgage and kids in college and stuff.
Trust me when I say that this is all fear. Multiple times I have uprooted family despite all discomfort, odds, safety nets, etc. to pursue a passion. First it was moving out of state to attend graduate school. Second, it was leaving a 6 figure career to pursue my dream. Downsizing was necessary. I had to question my values about money, things, accumulation, happiness. NEVER sell yourself short. If you are passionate you will find a way. Check out these guys. They have a great book and a movie. http://www.theminimalists.com/
It's risk/reward. For lots of people, uprooting, changing their job/family circumstance at X time is too much risk--and a lot of people are probably right in that regard. There is no assurance that your bold venture will succeed, despite your planning, ambition, etc. And if it was all but certain, it wouldn't be very bold, it'd just be common sense.
Depends on your family. I kinda want to stay married, which limits my forward acceleration. It's a matter of finding the right compromise point. Didn't say it was going to be easy!
Life as an adult is fundamentally and naturally about responsebilites and obligations - and most men no longer are able to cope with those because they bought into the illusion of life long youth - aka Peter Pan syndrome.
no, i think you have it backwards. the men who are 50 something right now dove headlong into family+salary+mortgage at an early age, possibly against their true desires, and many of them are feeling the negative effects of that.
peter pan syndrome means you never actually did anything with your life (positive or negative), not that you've been beaten down by it. how can you be beaten down by nothing?
whether you feel good or bad about your life depends 90% on personal and subjective perception. And this perception is almost 100% determined by the surrounding society. The other 10% are health facts.
Take a man who is somewhat wealthy in India and place him into San Francisco while conserving the living conditions - he will feel poor and inferior.
Or one of those guys who feel betrayed by the US government and hence voted for Trump - their living standard is most likely superior to that of a (very happy) king in ancient Egypt.
Today's 50 y/o men are influenced by what media communicates - and that is essentially a message conveying a hedonistic and materialistic lifestyle.
Those guys feel bad b/c they don't look as ripped as some Hollywood actor, their spouse not as hot as some chick on a magazine, they can't buy that car b/c their children are expensive etc.
Mature men and women consume less - and our society is built on consumption.
While I see the clock on the wall, I also remember that it really doesn't take long for something wonderful to transpire if it's ready to do so. Time is timeless, if you live it properly. Being "defeated" is just life asking you to be a bit more present in what you are doing. Picking up the tools at the end of a long day of remodeling the bathroom, for example. Worrying the clock is running out is counter to being present in anything done properly. I'm 50 and if anything, I've learned I'm not stopping to worry about the constraints my life gifts me at times.
What I really enjoy about being 51 is being able to understand both extremes you describe -- as well as being able to understand and remember what many other segments of life was like.
It gives you quite a broad view! At times it feels like standing on a mountain and seeing a vast landscape that you've crossed to get here -- and the mountain path ahead that leads to new heights.
There's also the joy of playing to type for the kids. So many times, they look at you as if you were some weird creature from a zoo. It's quite funny because you can get away with a lot. Hell, they don't know.
I have no doubt that skills and abilities decrease with age, but quite frankly, if you started out way ahead of the norm, by the time you hit your 50s and 60s you're still going to be on par or ahead of most of the population anyway.
So when a dear friend that's in their 20s or 30s asks me how I'm doing, I have quite a bit of fun describing some sort of horrible body issues -- until they realize I'm pulling their leg. And when I hit my 60s and 70s, if I last that long, you can be sure I'll be screwing with people who might think I have dementia. Screw 'em.
At 51, I've learned to enjoy the fact that there are about as many different kinds of people in the world as there are people. A surprisingly vast number of them are surprisingly intelligent if I am just willing to listen and learn and have an open mind.
Anyway, getting older tends to beat the alternatives.
>I have no doubt that skills and abilities decrease with age.
I wonder if this will just be true for your generation. Because of computers and the programming industry only really taking off when you were already a few years into your career.
I can imagine that someone who started their career with programming early and just continues with it might just keep widening the gap between them and newcomers. Which might only change if there is another shakeup in our lifetimes.
My boss from my previous job is in his mid forties and extremely good technically. Intimidatingly so. I imagine I can become the same if I keep going at it the way I do now. I'm 31.
At my second serious job in the late '90s, my manager was the programmer who wrote the linker for Cray unix when he was there. Great programmer. Now I'm the old guy who intimidates they young'ns.
Being a good programmer has very little to do with following current trends in tools. Tools can be learned, especially if they don't require a fundamental shift in thinking.
I've lived through a project of watching lifer COBOL programmers involved in transitioning their systems to Java. Some simply couldn't learn Java at all, it was such an alien way of thinking. Some of them quit or retired, some became analysts for the project, because they understood the business that was encoded in those bazillion lines of twenty year old COBOL. Now I'm starting to see a generation of early Java legacy apps rewritten in Node or whatever. What goes around...
At 24, I've noticed there are really two kinds of people in the world: those who think there are two kinds of people in the world and those that don't.
I've always thought of it this way. There are the people who want to "Be" something (writer, entrepreneur, etc) and those who want to "Have Been" something. The ones who want to have been always seem to be the ones who turn out to be not what they wanted because they've spent all their time thinking about how great it'll have been to be something than actually doing what they should have done to have been something.
That's a bit simplistic. Certainly there are people who defeated and bitter due to shallowness and lack of imagination vs those with the will and wisdom to pursue their objectives effectively. But it seems to me that you're identifying a philosophical dichotomy within your professional class.
But besides the philosophical divide, people are sorted by circumstantial conditions, depending on what good/bad luck they've had, decisions they've made, and economic situations they've experienced. Life might force people to choose between supporting their family and pursuing their dreams, or their dreams might depend on capital or social resources that they have no idea how to acquire, or they might be saddled with some burdensome health condition.
It's not simply a matter of having failed to make a necessary psychological adjustment to take charge of one's own life. There are lots of people out there that are fully aware of their situation and poorly positioned to do anything about it.
It's not just my professional class, though. I've observed this with friends in wildly varying professions - some poor, some very financially successful. But the ones who are down have sort of peaked out on their ambition. Either it's too late for their careers, or they think it is. They have kids hitting adulthood that make them feel like they've failed as parents. It can really suck.
> They decide this is all there is, and they're going to ride out their remaining years doing as little as possible other than wallowing in regret and yelling at kids to get off their damn lawn. It's sad and terrible.
Again, I enjoy the little things: the random coffee shop with my SO, my kids' smile, the view from the bridge when I am biking and so on.
But starting anything with longer term implications seems so useless.
Silly example: let's say I decided to learn to sing. I am truly tone-deaf and hilariously bad at singing. Maybe after years of constant practice I could approach some sort of basic proficiency but it would achieved at a cost of forsaking so many other experiences.
We have so little time that I have trouble making longer plans.
None of us have 10,000 years that Bill Murray had in Groundhog Day.
I think you should consider prioritizing medium-to-long term plans that will maximize the number of enjoyable little things you will have at the end of your life.
And about the particular example of learning to sing, about 2 years of deliberate practice with a good teacher will get you where you want to be, so, not that big of a commitment in the grand scheme of things, I'd say.
52 here, I put off things I know I can do in my old age and focus on the things requiring my physical health. So I am planning a PCT section hike with my daughter this summer but collecting plastic models to assemble when I'm 80. :-)
Thank you for this. I'm in my mid-30s and terrified that when I get older I'll turn into the beaten & defeated type that I myself have observed in some older people. I guess maybe my fear of losing my mojo is a hopeful indicator that I'll avoid such a fate. :)
So true, I started to become the latter when I turned 30 (now 33). People say I'm still relatively young and need to relax but I vehemently disagree with them. Life feels like it could end any second now. Time is of the essence.
My dad's been working on his startup thats gone nowhere for a decade now. Reading your comment just instantly and drastically shifted how I perceive the value of him doing that.
- destroy the housing market... check
- ruin higher education... check
- destroy democracy ... check
- bankrupt social security and medicare... in progress, but basically a foregone conclusion
- destroy all jobs for the current generation ... check
I think you're being a little unfair. The world is a large system of systems. I'm going to use the analogy of a set of spinning tops of varying sizes and speeds. For the longest while it has seemed that most of these spinning tops have been quite stable, whizzing around perfectly balanced - and they have. So much so, that people have forgotten that there is any other state. Recently however there have been changes - small initially - that have perturbed some of these tops so that they are now wobbling and bumping into other tops, cascading perturbations. Perturbations are scary and - no surprise - hard to predict where they'll go. No one really understands (though they may try and guess) what's going to happen next. The current state of the tops seems to bear no relation to how we started. How did we get here? What can we do? Meanwhile, well meaning but largely ignorant "spinners of tops" are busily trying to restore the earlier balanced state by various means, not realising that they are only adding to the chaos.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, very complex systems can have emergent complex (even chaotic) behaviours not originally anticipated. Outputs no longer bear a recognisable relation to inputs. Or even simpler, never ascribe to malice[1] what is often the result of ignorance/incompetence.
[1] Though clearly, there are some malicious actors who are now exploiting the chaos and introducing perturbations to their own short advantage.
I think you all are misunderstanding the article. It's extremely common on medium articles to use stock photo at the top of your article. This probably also serves as an article thumbnail in article summaries/indexes.
The author clearly uses a photo of what is ostensibly themselves as their profile pic. Nothing in the article indicates "this is me."
More important: there is little if anything to be gained by this deception. The article includes self promotion, including "Connect with me on twitter" in the author byline. But this is IMO a par for the course quid-pro-quo in nearly every blog article ever written.
I know it is extremely common, but one thing is when you write something about (say) biking let's say titled "Biking is good for your soul" and have a nice stock photo of a "generic biker" on a mountain trail, another IMHO is if the title is:
"I’m learning to code at 56. Here’s an epic beat-down of my critical inner self."
and just after the title you put an image of a good looking fiftyish guy looking at the reader straight in the eyes, and right after it you repeat:
"I’m 56 years old and learning to code.".
Maybe it is not "intended" or done in any way in "bad faith", still it does seem like saying, "here I am, at 56, look at me".
It's pretty clearly hosted by freecodecamp.com; of course it's something intended to promote them. It's like saying that a post on the Google blog about "getting girls into coding" is an ad for Google.
But it can't be astroturfing, which has a specific meaning about misrepresenting the source of the support.
The stock image is shady, but that's more of a Medium-style-blogpost thing (edit: see below) -- people routinely add stock images in obviously-not-fair-use ways, without permission; the negotiation article used a ton of stills from Mad Men (presumably before they got a nasty letter and took them down).
I can relate with the fitting in part, though my situation is the complete opposite. I am a self-taught developer that skipped college and I have been a professional software engineer since 18, I am now 21 and have been programming for at least 8 years. At the company I am now working for as a senior engineer I am the youngest here by a large margin. I am the most experienced and youngest and it has caused a bit of hostility towards me. I can understand why though but luckily it has died down since I have been here a few months.
I submitted this yesterday around Noon and got 3 votes. Today, here it is in another submission. Take a look at the URL. HN apparently uses the entire URL, including hashes, which means this is considered a separate submission. Interesting.
If you don't get upvoted quickly, you'll get missed. Several weeks ago, 3 of 4 stories that i submitted within two days were completely passed over, only to be resubmitted by other people, which ended up on the front page. One story was even #1 for several hours.
I have noticed this. I have also noticed that reddit is a lot better in this regard - good stories tend to get picked up - e.g. in subreddits that have a comparable new post volume.
Here it often seems quite random what does get picked up.
Please don't go the web developer (javascript) path; node, react, webpack, etc.. It will drive you nuts, things keep changing radically in a very high pace and can take quite some time before you feel comfortable in this crazy field.
I would choose python, ruby(or crystal), c++, c#, etc.. and stay away from the browser, unless you have a very good reason to write for that.
I am not the author, but I'm in the exact same situation (except I'm 37). And I am following the javascript path. It seems employable, interesting and, not hard.
I know it is a bet, I'm betting in React and if in two years it is old news, I will have to move on. But until then, I am employable.
I am very early in my learning path (started from scracth last November), but I have a very clear impression that it is easier to learn Javascript than any of the languages you mentioned.
Would you care to elaborate more your point? It would help me a lot.
I wouldn't necessarily say that JS is easier to learn than those other languages, but I think it's easier to be productive in it.
If you use one of those other languages with the web, people are going to want you to use Javascript anyhow. So you have to learn both, unless you only do very, very basic things.
If you use one of those languages without doing web-stuff... Ugh. Maybe some phone apps line Swift or Java might be do-able, but I dunno about productivity for a long time.
On the other hand, it's not that hard to get good enough with Javascript to build some nice usable websites and get paid. IMO it's by far the shortest path to a programming career, and that will help get good enough to learn other languages and spread out while earning income.
On one hand, it's warming to hear about someone trying to better themselves. People should never stop learning. On the other, entering a career "to make money" rubs me the wrong way.
Many people come from backgrounds where their access to money was extremely limited. Maybe not this guy. But many people look to new careers such as programming as a way to help themselves and their families have a better life. Those people should not be frowned upon IMO.
After a long career in public health, I began learning to code at age 50. I took a couple computer science courses at a local university and then attended a bootcamp focused on Rails. The bootcamp got me an internship, and after the internship, I was hired on a junior dev. Three years later, I am still at the same company (although it has been acquired) and have received one promotion. Most of what I learned, I learned on the job, and there was a long period where I just googled, cut and pasted, but with time, things began to make more sense. I really enjoy what I do today and can imagine doing it for many years to come.
I really wish that life-long learning would be assumed and encouraged on a societal level. Even if it's something that is currently not seen as "productive".
I wonder what my older relatives and acquaintances would've want to learn, or work with, without the chains of economical reality.
My father (63, I think?) is starting to learn to code. I chose a decent beginner book for him (Python) and spent some time trying to figure out IDE situation would work best. But the places he stumbled were a total surprise to me.
He's never learned to type, imagine coding with hunt-and-peck. Characters like ()[]. he had no idea where to find. He didn't have much understanding of file systems; so things like saving and renaming were tricky.
Anyway, he was pretty thrilled with getting a "hello world" example and one that asks your name and prints out a greeting.
I always find it strange when programmers where I work copy+paste everything they can to avoid typing. If you program for a living, typing is your bread and butter. The better you are at it, the more you can get done and the faster your thoughts get dumped to the source file before you forget what the hell you started typing in the first place :)
I envy your father. It will be fun watching him have "a-ha" moments as the pieces start to fit together.
Regarding a quote from Dan Bunten "No developer, on their deathbed, hopes for more time alone at a computer screen". Perhaps a quote from an expert, or perhaps not, either way this quote resonates with me. I have some contempt for "certified experts" anyway. The carrot at the end of the obstacle course is this: helping people become better may exponentially increase your reward while tinkering in front of a screen is risky business.
learn arabic, learn japanese, learn chemistry. "coding" is dense and every craft has its skilled practitioners. will anyone read your code in two hundred years?
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