Are more programmers young or old?

[Hacker Jack]

I asked a question on Reddit about how everyone learned C++ and most of the answers were like "I learned this and that first back in the 60's then I learned C++ in 80's or 90's".

I always thought programming/computer science was a young man's because of all the "day in life of software developers/data scientists/pen testers/game devs etc" showing people who were like 20 to 40 years old.

When I ask questions on Reddit I can usually tell the older people from the younger people because the older guys usually explain stuff by the book. Just thought I'd add that.

 

[yungman]

What the difference whether it's old people or young people? all it matters is their knowledge. It could be only young people like games, You never caught me dead playing games. I was from era games started to become popular, I HATE games then, I HATE games now. Gaming is only a small part of programming. Where I came from, it's more important for programmers to know physics, advanced math than anything else. AND there a huge industry in scientific programming hand in hand with hardware. Remember, all the languages are ONLY A TOOL to get a job done, nothing more.

Come to silicon valley, you'll find so many jobs for firmware programming.

 

[yungman]

BTW, I see you started quite a few threads asking different questions about programming. But I have not seen you post a single code that you have question. Don't worry about the age of the people that answer your question, just worry about whether they can answer your question. Person like Mark44 is actually a professor for C++. You don't get better than that. what do you care how old is he?

If you have question, post the code, ask the question and see whether you get a good response that answer your question. Isn't that all that matters? I find it helpful here. According to what you describe, you just decided to start with C++, I am just 5 months ahead of you, we both are green horns. I learn from this forum, I yet to have to go to another forum yet and I am one chapter away from finishing the Gaddis brief version C++ book.

Have a question, post the code and see what you get.

 

[jedishrfu]

Programming has changed over the years. Its neither a young mans nor an old mans game.

However, young programmers men and women who come out of CS school are more likely to be placed on the newest projects with the latest languages because they are cheaper to hire, and have few preconceived notions of how things should work.

Older programmers see little need to jump to the latest language or methodology as they have what they need to get the job done. They even resist jumping to new versions of languages and tools having learned the ins and out of them and realizing that change for changes sake just introduces more problems into the mix.

Im always looking at new tech trying see if it fixes existing problems that we encounter. As an example, we do a lot if client server in a java environment.

One common problem we encounter is deployment and configuration. Docker addresses this space and we’d like to use it since we can configure and deploy a single image that just runs out of the box.

However, images tend to be larger than deploying just jar files and so the problem becomes how to shrink them leads to the idea of using Go binaries and a cycle of new problems surface as you try to convert.

And so young programmers become old programmers. ...

 

[FactChecker]

I think that the current trend is for new programmers to learn their first programming in a language other than C++. In high schools, there are a lot of classes for robotics that use Python or Scratch. Even the slightly older people who learned C++ first probably started with a C-type subset of the language.

 

[FactChecker]

Many professional programmers use such a large variety of languages that it is hard to count them. For general-purpose languages, often the difference between programming the languages is just some simple syntax changes. If you want to see some more significant differences, look at specialized languages like APL, Lisp, or MATLAB Simulink.

 

[jedishrfu]

And add to that Forth, Prolog and Julia. In contrast, Go is a reimaginig of C for the modern world with baked in concurrency, garbage collection and better pointer usage.

 

[yungman]

First, the older ones that survived the high pressure environment move up to higher position in management, so the young one write all the programs. Well, I don't know what happens to the ones that cannot survive the high pressure environment! Remember it only takes one old person to be in charged of many young ones to program.

Also, it can be older people don't have the enthusiasm to learn like the ones just got out of school. Program languages are like fashion that change everyday. I started out doing a lot of assembly programming 40 years ago, designing processor controller hardware, Then in 1983, I realize they are like fashion, both hardware and software are changing everyday and you have to keep learning and learning. Nothing hard at all, just have to keep reading and reading. If you are out of the field for a few years, you can never come back without steep learning curve.

That's not the kind of life I want to live. I was young, smug and willing to work 80 hours a week at the time. But I knew it won't last forever. One day if I have a family, I was not going to work 80 hours week. I changed to analog and RF design and never look back. All the programming I learned means nothing now.

 

[harborsparrow]

I am 67, and I've been writing code at least sporadically since I was maybe twenty. I am still employed part-time as a programmer and system administrator. What happens in industry, often, is that people start as programmers but then get shunted off into other areas and "lose their touch" at coding and just willingly never go back to it. I deliberately maneuvered in several situations so that I could still touch code.

There is also agism in the software industry, and it is based on a mistaken premise that longer hours means higher productivity. Older people learn that it is not wise to (at the behest of an employer) burn themselves out writing code, and in my opinion, as I aged and was no longer willing to work outrageously long hours, I made up for it in several ways, with judgement grown due to wide experience.

Over the years, I also got better at teamwork. The programming profession, in my opinion, tends to attract people who are loners (sort of the stereotypical "tech geek"); programmer training also probably does not emphasize or teach teamwork. But most workplaces require maximum teamwork. Software managers often are either techies lacking good people skills, or people persons lacking tech skills. The larger software companies (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc) probably avoid this, but I'm speaking of middle range companies where "the rest of us" work. I worked in telecom, big pharma, academia, and science (biology) areas.

The last decade of my career, I was lucky to land a job working for biologists who valued my ability to get things done at every level, from sysadmin and user interfaces to web dev to number crunching. They didn't pay well, but they did treat me well and sometimes even said thank you. I had such a long queue of fires needing to be put out that I could never get it all done, but I was pretty good at prioritizing, organizing and communicating, and I thrived at that job.

Here's my view, as an older person, on coding and age:

* the young tend to be fearless and, if healthy, willing to work very long hours to the point of burnout; certain industries such as gaming exploit this, as do the large corporations

* older programmers can make up for lesser endurance by dent of experience, if they have bothered to keep abreast of developments and continue working regularly with code

* an ideal "team" of programmers will have both youngsters with their stamina, enthusiasm and lack of fear of change, and older programmers who've been through the fire, understand maintenance and performance hazards, and may have developed more people skills

This is all based on generalizations, which are maybe obnoxious and will not apply to every person or situation.

 

[sysprog]

. . . Person like Mark44 is actually a professor for C++. You don't get better than that. what do you care how old is he? . . .

That to me looks like a very nice appreciation for a person whom I think is very worthy of being so nicely appreciated.

 

[sysprog]

Great post (#9) by @harborsparrow $\dots$

 

[sysprog]

I started programming as a youngster (age 12), and now 50 years later I can still code, but more slowly $-$ I think that I was at my best when I was around 30 years old $-$ that's old enough to know what you're doing, and still young enough to be able to do it rapidly $\dots$

 

[rcgldr]

The programming profession, in my opinion, tends to attract people who are loners (sort of the stereotypical "tech geek")

This depends on the type of programming. I started programming in 1968 in 10th grade (my high school had an IBM 1130, and on Saturdays we could go to an IBM data center for a class there on a IBM 360). My first job was in 1973, a multi-system | multi-tasking database server using six HP 2100 systems, and there weren't any "tech geek" types there. Most were involved with some type of sports and some were into muscle cars, and most of them over 27 years old were married. I spent the early half of my career working on multi-tasking operating systems for mini-computers. Later on, I transitioned into doing device drivers for Windows and Xenix, mutli-taking operating systems type work for embedded devices, and also Reed Solomon error correction code. At all the companies I worked at, the "tech geek" types were a tiny minority. I'm retired now, but still active at sites like stack overflow and here helping others with programming questions (plus some math and physics), and I've contributed to some Wiki articles.

long hours

In my area (Orange County, California), it is fairly well known which companies are the programming equivalent of "sweat shops". These tend to be jobs that don't attract a lot of programmers, so the ones they do get end up working longer hours, but get paid more to compensate, sort of a self fulfilling prophecy, they are "sweat shops" because of management choice, not due to the actual work involved, which is a large part of the reason they don't attract a lot of programmers. Most programmers avoid companies like these, or they work at those companies for a short time for the higher pay while looking for reasonable jobs. The turnover rate at "sweat shops" is much higher than for normal programming jobs.

 

[yungman]

There's no easy money, hardware and software are very high pay, but YOU EARN IT!

I retired at 53, I got FIRED because I had to take 2 months off. When I got hired as the manager of EE in 2004, I already told them that I had to take 2 months off some time in the future because I had to sell my houses and move. That was the condition for employment. I could see those days in 2004 that real estate was going to crash and crash hard. So I was in a process of selling in the bayarea and invest in out of state. So I told the company that I was going to take off.

My group got our part done in one year, but the software and mechanical fell behind and we had to wait to final test the system. I held off as long as I could, but in Fall of 2005, I could not wait any longer because I knew the market was going to crash any day. So right when the company started gearing up for integration and final test, I had to take off. I got fired for that. turned out most of the electronics under my group worked.

My job was my hobby, real estate is where I earn money. I sold the house right on time, the price dropped by half later on. You are talking about over $350K lost if I hung onto the job. If I were to do it again, I would do exactly the same. I said $crew it, I quit working, why work? The VP did not like me at the time, I got fired over the objection of the CTO of the company. Funny, that guy left and the CTO called me back to contract for a year and half in 2015! I even worked at home and get the good pay. Finally I quit, yes, this time I quit! The tax was very steep, and on top, stupid medicare tried to raise our premium because income was too high! I am not willing to work to support the lazy. So I quit for good this time.

This is how the high tech world is. You have to be prepare. I knew from day one it's going to be like this. So instead of following my friends buying nice car and all in the late 80s, we invest and drove two rust buckets. Those days, we even bought a house with in-law baseman. So in case we are sick and tired of working, we can move downstair and rent the upstair out. I feel sorry for digital hardware engineers and programmers that have to constantly learning and learning under pressure. At least I switched to analog RF design that is timeless. But still, there was a lot of pressure to get things done.

To the young people, save up money and invest when you are young and energetic. You are NOT going to be like that for long. Don't go spend all the money and live from paycheck to paycheck. Now the time is good, I don't expect this will continue long. Corporate tax is going up, jobs are going to leave the country again, market likely to crash again...Wise up. Even if you don't invest, save money. Remember when you retire today over 65, your SS is only about $2500/month, it's hard to live with this amount even if you live in lower real estate area. You will need saving or extra income after retiring.