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Ask HN: How many are 30+ years and still active programmers?

42 points by bootcat ↗ HN
How many of you out there are still active programmers contributing to open source and community, while being greater than 30 years ? How to you manage personal life, work and contributions ?

84 comments

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iampoul
Might just be me, but thats a pretty odd question, do you expect programmers to retire after 30 ?
bootcat
Not really !! But it would personally motivate me to know how many people, older than me are still great at programming !
vmasto
What do you mean "still great at programming"?

Are you afraid that programming skills deteriorate with age for some reason?

purplethinking
My view (as a still quite young engineer around 30) is that good engineers don't become worse with age, quite the opposite. If you as a young programmer think you're better/faster than those old farts, check back in 10 years or so and you'll probably realize how naive you were. Now, bad engineers might stagnate completely, and those people are probably what makes up the bulk of the "old people stuck in old technologies; can't code" meme. Along with the people who end up doing less technical stuff and then forced to interview for other/technical positions after a layoff.

I think if you try to be excellent at what you do and improve over time, there is no reason you should have to worry about this until your brain is actually withering away.

lj3
> Now, bad engineers might stagnate completely, and those people are probably what makes up the bulk of the "old people stuck in old technologies; can't code" meme.

> I think if you try to be excellent at what you do and improve over time, there is no reason you should have to worry about this until your brain is actually withering away.

It sounds like a pretty serious problem to me. Everybody knows the meme, so when they're hiring older people they're really going to try to rake them over the coals in the interview to make sure they don't hire one of those 'old people stuck in old technologies; can't code' devs. This makes it much harder for those who can still code to pass technical interviews.

falcolas
The nice thing about programming is that it's not like Starcraft: your typing and mousing skills, which would be the first to degrade as you get older, matter the least. It's not like Doom, where your reaction times decide your success or failure.

It's more like Civilization, where you spend more time looking at the board and thinking of moves than you do actually entering moves. And the more times you play, the more problems you've encountered, and the more possible moves you see. The Huns are attempting to flank you? Been there, done that. Someone picked up a wonder? You can work around that. Playing against Ghandi? Look out for them nukes.

And if you decide to play co-op Civilization with a newbie, you have the opportunity to help them bypass some of that learning curve, by passing on the things you have learned over your years of play.

The advantage of having seen all of the problems, in business terms? You don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to solve them, and you won't make a lot of mistakes while solving them. You can get past these simple problems in no time flat, and move on to the problems you haven't seen before. This makes you fast at 90% of the tasks you face.

The downside of having seen all the problems? You have a solution that you know works for every problem, and might not see the benefit in trying other solutions. When the Huns flank you, you send 50 spearman units to break the flank. But what about 10 artillery units? Or 1 tank?

When you know a solution works, you have to consciously push yourself to try a new solution. For some people that's easy, for others, not so much. But if you really want to remain at the top of your game, you need to make that push.

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iampoul
Well, I'm 35 and my progression gained momentum after 30, before the 30s everything new took time to get into because i had this idea i had to know everything about everything to be good. But now its a lot easier as i've build up quite some experience on how to fail and succeed.

Programming wise and learning wise i've also grown wiser and know where to have my focus to be able to get better, faster and learn new technologies with my own mental algorithm. Though this most likely has nothing todo with being over 30, but maybe more with the time and experience gained over time. But as you get into the 30s, some people get kids and buy a house and what not. But that will also in time teach you how to manage the time you have available, and you will try to work more efficient and narrow your focus onto your goals and tasks in your everyday programming job or what you're doing, you learn to filter away all the noise and stay focused on the task at hand.

CalRobert
I hope not, but I'm 34 and feel ancient.

I got a late start in the field (studied physics in college and graduated in to the 2008 recession) and suspect if I'd been just a year or two later I'd have never made it happen.

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russianator
Over 40 and still active, whatever that means :D
amcrouch
This smacks more of "I am married with kids, a full-time job and a severe lack of time".

If that is the case then you just need to grab time as and when you can. You will find you can find half an hour a day at least. The limited time will help you focus. I find I get up early or stay up late to make time for this.

buserror
Over 45 and still program for work, for fun, and for profit!

Started at 12yo too... I've written a lot of code, and will continue to add to the pile until they pry my keyboard from my dead, cold fingers!

pvinis
Is it a cool keyboard though? :p
joshmanders
Heh, when I was 29 I felt different, I felt like I was getting to old to program.. So I made it a goal to "retire" by 35, because I didn't want to be 40+ coding.

In a little over 2 weeks I turn 32. I don't see or feel like retiring in 3 years.

Corrado
I'm rapidly approaching 50 and I've never been more excited to write code. With things like cloud computing and the Rust language, everyday feels like an adventure. I hope I never have to retire. That said, I think I might enjoy working from the beach in my later years. :)
Artlav
At 30. Active, never contributed much having been burned several times early on.

For me programming is akin to a work of art, so i keep doing various projects for my own fun.

Not sure how one can become "inactive", barring a disabling accident.

gtirloni
The fact that this is a relevant question in our industry scares me (I have similar concerns, not criticizing OP).
dominotw
you are continuously expected to deliver more bang for the buck as you age. After a certain age, I found it that, its hard to make exponential gains. I guess you could wage stagnate but then you get age discriminated during hiring.
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mindcrime
I question whether or not it is a relevant question. I haven't seen any evidence that there's anything particularly unique about being 30 or older. Certainly nothing changed for me when I turned 30, or 40 for that matter. And I have plenty of colleagues who are the same age, or older. As far as I can see, programming is programming and age is pretty much irrelevant.
s_kilk
I'm hitting 30 this year, and just had a kid.

Still going strong.

siddboots
32 and writing more code than ever. I've gone gradually from very basic data analysis in excel at the start of my career, to today, utility scale power simulation, probabilistic modelling, and enterprise ETL stuff using a combination of python and clojure.

I also run weekly data analysis workshops with my staff, where I get to teach junior analysts and engineers how to think Bayesian, and how to replace Excel with Pandas.

Having the time of my life at work :)

stuaxo
39 and no idea what I would do if this was not my career. Having an active social life makes it hard to do much programming outside of work, but do manage occasionally. Submit code to open source projects as I use them at work, which might make me a fly-by committer, but may be better than nothing.

Get some nice chunks of free time by contracting and taking chunks of time inbetween, though I guess this could change once kids come into the story.

Hates_
36 and still going strong!
rullelito
Over 30, still active, not in OS though.
staticelf
I am 27, have no kids but the code I write outside of work tends to be more focused on my private projects. Some is open source, but far from all of it.
hellified
46, still in the game, though I admit the design portion holds much more fascination for me these days. To the OPs point, I do experience a great deal of pressure to head towards management every time I switch jobs. My rational is that when I get to the point where I can't absorb the minutiae, but can still see the big picture, maybe it's time for me to push the keyboard away and manage. Haven't gotten there yet (that I know of).
Jaruzel
45 here. I tried management roles for a few years at the end of my 30s, early 40s. Found out the hard way, that I'm no good at it. These days I've switched to Contracting, and focusing on niche solutions for Identity Management as an Architect.

I'm much happier like this.

noir_lord
37, just in the process of switching back to been a programmer for someone else (rather than working for myself).

Really looking forwards to it.

rsto
I'm 38, work as a contractor and my long-term client pays 100% of my time to work on their open-source tech stack. All my contributions are public on Github, starting from early prototyping.

When I work on personal projects, I contribute to open-source when I find something to fix in the libraries I am using. But that's just a side effect, not a decision to do extra open-source work in my free time.

mark_ellul
39, Software Engineer and still actively programming. Having 2 children makes it hard to do any other contributions apart from being a Dad.
ElCapitanMarkla
30, been in full time web development since finishing Uni 10 years ago. Worked from home for the last 4 years and currently have a sprog on the way. Minimal OS contributions but I do spend a few hours each week working on personal programming type projects.
jlebrech
34, won't quit till i'm 60 (but as a business owner eventually)
mysterydip
I'm 35, and while my career has oscillated between dev and sysadmin, my hobby/passion has always been coding, specifically games. Most never see release due to time and having too many itchy ideas to scratch.

I've done a little open source but mostly shy away because I just want to code, not get into meta-arguments over style or whatnot. Not saying every project has that issue specifically, but I don't have time to sift through and find "compatible" communities to contribute to that are also doing projects I find interesting.

pulse7
You will be active programmer as long as you have passion doing that. Passion has no age limit! And there are many companies looking for passionate programmers...
twunde
My last job, between 50-75% of the programmers were 30+, with the oldest being over 70. There are a lot of older programmers, especially in the suburbs. Some will chase the new things like React and NodeJS while others are happy to use older tools like PHP, Python, or Perl. And of course there may be one or two that love COBAL but everyone I've met is willing to learn new tech.
naveensky
For once I thought you meant 30+ of programming experience. I am 32 and still program on daily basis. I do not see any reason to quit or code less, infact given a chance I would like to code more.
magnat
I was going to say that 30+ years of experience as a programmer isn't that uncommon. Then I've read comments...
vkazanov
32

It's my 12s anniversary as a professional programmer. Did work on all kinds of projects: a hugely popular online game, a search engine, all kinds of smaller projects. Love programming more than ever.

Couple of noticeable age-related factors:

1. As a proud father I have to be very careful when planning my spare time. For example, I mostly do hobby projects early in the morning now.

2. Got my first serious RSI-related trauma recently. Younger programmers, please, start caring about your hands as early as possible!

libeclipse
> Younger programmers, please, start caring about your hands as early as possible!

How?

vkazanov
Well... Of the top of my head: use a proper keyboard, use all of your 10 fingers, code in a proper body position. Hands should be in a natural position most of the time.

Standard laptop keyboards and mice are a crime against one's hands, it's generally better to replace 'em with something ergonomic.

I did boxing as a university sport. That was the worst choice possible: I developed early-stage osteoarthritis.

arisAlexis
I recently picked up kickboxing. You think it's bad for RSI even with bandaged wrists?
vkazanov
My doctor said that everything involving wrist micro-traumas is bad: tennis, volleyball, *boxing, etc.
dominotw
1. keyboard

2. Posture/ergonomics

3. Take frequent breaks while coding.

4. do minimal typing when you are not actively coding.