Yes, I still want to do it when I turn 56
Do you really want to continue doing this when you turn 50?
My recent post “Why I don’t do overtime work for free and don’t advise you” remains the most popular of my posts every week since it was written. So it seems that I am not the only one who believes that coding to a pulp is a waste of time. But I will not repeat.
Returning to the question of wanting to do programming in 55 years: in my case, the answer is positive. I still have the pleasure of working on complex tasks and finding good solutions. Every morning I browse a number of sites about technology and programming to learn something new. On the day when I cease to be interested in new things, I will simply cease to be a programmer. My morning ritual has not changed since I started working on my first job as a programmer, although at that time we were dealing with magazines, catalogs and books.
')
I remember my first job at General Dynamics, where I was engaged in supporting the new IBM PCs that we received. It was not my only task, but it was a novelty. So, no one knew what might be needed for this, and I read everything I could get, including full documentation on IBM products. Soon, even IBM employees began to come to me for advice on setting up and integrating their various products. I was not required to learn all of this, but it seemed to be useful knowledge. And now I also study different things simply because it is interesting, even if I most likely do not need this knowledge.
If you are not interested in the world of programming and other areas of technology, then your career as a programmer is unlikely to be long. Most of my friends who were educated in Computer Science, when I was in college, no longer do programming; they lost interest and sooner or later fell under the wheels of new technologies. And I was educated in general chemistry.
Over the past years, I have transformed, probably, as many times as the hero of the film The Wolfman (by the way, in high school I was called the Wolfman).
What I consider the most important now is that it is necessary to work not more, but smarter. When you get older, you can no longer do programming 20 hours a day, and you do not think that programming 20 hours a day can be useful at all. How many hours a day can you work productively? Probably, this limit decreases with age, but as you continue to improve your skills, the result still remains at an altitude, it just takes less coffee.
The biggest difference between the present time and when I started to work is a large selection of languages, tools, platforms, methodologies and, in general, the options to choose from (or among which they choose for you). Now it is impossible to know everything, even in a separate narrow area, as I had with the IBM PC. Now more valued ability to make the right choice. One of my favorite episodes in the movie is when a villain dies in Indiana Jones, and the old knight says, "He made the wrong choice." There are so many brilliant things to choose from, and only a few of them are really worth using.
Experience gives you an understanding of when to move forward, and when to slow down. And when you are young, you look forward and do not think that you can fail. Each of these approaches has its own charm. I imagine young Steve Jobs, who had a lot of ideas that he could not yet realize, and a mature Steve Jobs, who could translate the idea into something amazing. I am not saying that age itself is an advantage, but that combining the interest and vision of a young man with experience will never become obsolete.
If you want to be a programmer at 55, you shouldn’t lose the thirst to know more and do better and easier. If you slow down, the wheels of technology will come closer until they crush you, and then you have to look for another job.
When I was 24, and I first worked as a programmer, I did not think about what I would be at 55, but I already knew what to do in order to stay in demand and be one step ahead.
Will programming as a profession exist after 31 years? Good question. Will I program in 86 years? Probably not. But if it will be possible, and I will not care any more - maybe. By that time, I’ll probably be so smart that I can fit my working day in 30 minutes.
Or I'll tell my robot friend to do it for me and I will sleep on!
Is there more stress on a large scale development? I have to admit, yes. Still, this is the lot of young.No, this is a lot of stupid. I am 55 and I have been doing professional programming since 1981, and I started when I was in school, in 1973 or so. And what I found out during this time is that, by itself, coding to a pulp has no meaning.
My recent post “Why I don’t do overtime work for free and don’t advise you” remains the most popular of my posts every week since it was written. So it seems that I am not the only one who believes that coding to a pulp is a waste of time. But I will not repeat.
Returning to the question of wanting to do programming in 55 years: in my case, the answer is positive. I still have the pleasure of working on complex tasks and finding good solutions. Every morning I browse a number of sites about technology and programming to learn something new. On the day when I cease to be interested in new things, I will simply cease to be a programmer. My morning ritual has not changed since I started working on my first job as a programmer, although at that time we were dealing with magazines, catalogs and books.
')
I remember my first job at General Dynamics, where I was engaged in supporting the new IBM PCs that we received. It was not my only task, but it was a novelty. So, no one knew what might be needed for this, and I read everything I could get, including full documentation on IBM products. Soon, even IBM employees began to come to me for advice on setting up and integrating their various products. I was not required to learn all of this, but it seemed to be useful knowledge. And now I also study different things simply because it is interesting, even if I most likely do not need this knowledge.
If you are not interested in the world of programming and other areas of technology, then your career as a programmer is unlikely to be long. Most of my friends who were educated in Computer Science, when I was in college, no longer do programming; they lost interest and sooner or later fell under the wheels of new technologies. And I was educated in general chemistry.
Over the past years, I have transformed, probably, as many times as the hero of the film The Wolfman (by the way, in high school I was called the Wolfman).
What I consider the most important now is that it is necessary to work not more, but smarter. When you get older, you can no longer do programming 20 hours a day, and you do not think that programming 20 hours a day can be useful at all. How many hours a day can you work productively? Probably, this limit decreases with age, but as you continue to improve your skills, the result still remains at an altitude, it just takes less coffee.
The biggest difference between the present time and when I started to work is a large selection of languages, tools, platforms, methodologies and, in general, the options to choose from (or among which they choose for you). Now it is impossible to know everything, even in a separate narrow area, as I had with the IBM PC. Now more valued ability to make the right choice. One of my favorite episodes in the movie is when a villain dies in Indiana Jones, and the old knight says, "He made the wrong choice." There are so many brilliant things to choose from, and only a few of them are really worth using.
Experience gives you an understanding of when to move forward, and when to slow down. And when you are young, you look forward and do not think that you can fail. Each of these approaches has its own charm. I imagine young Steve Jobs, who had a lot of ideas that he could not yet realize, and a mature Steve Jobs, who could translate the idea into something amazing. I am not saying that age itself is an advantage, but that combining the interest and vision of a young man with experience will never become obsolete.
If you want to be a programmer at 55, you shouldn’t lose the thirst to know more and do better and easier. If you slow down, the wheels of technology will come closer until they crush you, and then you have to look for another job.
When I was 24, and I first worked as a programmer, I did not think about what I would be at 55, but I already knew what to do in order to stay in demand and be one step ahead.
Will programming as a profession exist after 31 years? Good question. Will I program in 86 years? Probably not. But if it will be possible, and I will not care any more - maybe. By that time, I’ll probably be so smart that I can fit my working day in 30 minutes.
Or I'll tell my robot friend to do it for me and I will sleep on!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153789/
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