Study Shows Programmers Get Better With Age 352
mikejuk writes "It's a prejudice the young and old both share, but with opposite conclusions, of course. Young is best or old is best — most have an opinion. Now we have some interesting statistics ingeniously gathered and processed by Peter Knego, 'big data' style, that 'proves' older is better when it comes to programming, at least!"
Known this one for a long time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Claims of agism always seemed funny to me in the context of programming (or really most industries).
Someone with 25 years experience is far more employable than someone with 5 years because they... have more experience?
It's not like the "olden days" where how many years of service you'd get out of someone mattered. Now people are lucky if they have the same job for 5 years. Manpower requirements fluctuate so much in today's industry that the days of "get a job out of school and stay there till you retire" are long gone.
And there is value in young blood as well, but you really need a mixture of people out of university with new ideas and people with experience to make them work (or who understand why they won't). Even if a person loses touch with current technologies, it is worth having people around who have seen a lot of shit fail and know the warning signs.
This of course assumes we arn't talking about someone who learns to program at the age of 40 or something.. then all bets are off I guess.
A guy where I work is retiring in two months. We have known this for like a year and we are _still_ scrambling to get all the info out of his head (we maintain some very old systems... and he was around when they were _designed_). If I retired tomorrow no one would give a shit. "Just hire another c/c++/java guy with a little asm". Obviously this more more related to knowledge than skill.. but still.. that's value!
Also.. interesting (yet pretty thin) way of getting the stats! And I can't be the only one who was pleasantly surprised not to find some huge 50 page report at the pointy end of that link.
Bias/self-selecting sample (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Known this one for a long time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone with 25 years experience is far more employable than someone with 5 years because they... have more experience?
I'm 50 and have been coding (for a living) since about 20. I'm not up on the new maths but I think that counts for 30 yrs doing software.
yet, I can't find a job right now. been looking more than I'd like to admit. I'm in the bay area, I have been a serious software (and now, self-taught hardware) geek, I've worked for a who's who of silicon valley. but I can't find jobs or offers and occasionally I'll find contract 'offers' but they are lowballs, below market rate and somewhat insulting. I've been in the bay area for nearly 20 years (started at DEC back in maynard before that). yet I can't find a job.
so, you tell me. ageism? the onsite interviews I've gotton, most of the group members are all young (20's and 30's).
one female member that I interviewed with actually, literally, said this "hmm, you've been 'everywhere'. and, wow, you've been working longer than I've been alive!" she was in her early 20's and so, yes, I have been programming longer than she has been breathing.
I'm not getting offers and its even hard to get a phone interview.
(just one datapoint, if you care)
Sorry, Fallacy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Interesting)
You also need the guy's with 25 years experience seeing this shit go wrong to keep them in check.
Yes, but you need the right sort of guy with 25 years of experience. You don't want the guy who says "we tried that: it didn't work." You want the guy who, as somebody above said, says "This is why it didn't work last time. Can we find a way of dealing with that this time?" The other thing the right guy with 25 years experience might be able to do is spot connections: "You want to do that? Hmm, that seems to tie in with this thing I worked on 15 years ago. Maybe some of the ideas from that will help."
Re:Bias/self-selecting sample (Score:5, Interesting)
I did some research on this, namely read TFA. The summary is extremely misleading.
The actual story is "Old programmers have better reputions on stackoverflow. They don't write better posts, they just spend more time there."
The "study" says absolutely nothing about programming skill. Just stackoverflow profile statistics.
Re:Known this one for a long time... (Score:5, Interesting)
leave the bay area? but I do really like it here. climate, culture, food (especially the food; one of my weaknesses). I'm also too accustomed to just running down to the local surplus stores (bay area has quite a few) and being able to build and hack on my hardware stuff (places like HSC electronics kind of keep me locked to the bay area; and if you're into hardware, you understand what I'm saying).
it would be a very sad state of affairs for a data networking guy (my core field) to have to move *away* from silicon valley to find a job. I guess I'm not ready to say 'uncle' quite yet.
Re:True, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you given any thought to the possibility that maybe your code was crap twenty years ago because you couldn't think straight with all the partying? You didn't have the discipline to think things through instead of jumping into a coding marathon? If you would have taken a more reasoned approach, you actually would have, out of necessity, worked less back then, and been more effective? (certainly not as effective as you are now, but still)
Believe it or not, there are people who take that more reasoned approach when they are young. I'm one of them. I've always produced less. I've always stayed away from approaches that have proven ineffective (I've placed great value in vicarious experience). What I ultimately do produce has always been more effective.
But the approach is definitely undervalued. People like to throw crap on the wall and see what sticks. Watching others do it and fail isn't good enough for them. It's always boggled my mind.
Reading vs. Writing (Score:4, Interesting)
After 20+ years of programming, I definitely feel that I program better now; especially with regard to making the code more flexible to change and better algorithm design based on years of trial and error with diff approaches.
However, I have to admit that I've gotten slower at reading other people's code. My eyes just are not as good. They are not blurry; it's just that they don't move as fast, take longer to focus into position, and I can't quite read (absorb) as fast. Can I get a bionic implant?
So, age is a trade-off.