Ask HN: How plausible is it to continue becoming a lifelong programmer?

I have no particular insight, other than to say that it's certainly possible; I've met people who were programming when they retired.

It might be good to think instead about leaving your options open? After all, how do you know this is what you'll want? After programming for 10 or 20 years, maybe you'll want to try something new? Presumably you'll know more then than you do now.

There is nothing keeping you from remaining a programmer as long as you are good at it. I am in my early 50's and have been programming since I was 13 years old, professionally since I was 18. I have studiously avoided management for my entire career and have survived several severe layoffs. Middle managers can be replaced far easier than a good programmer with extensive experience. You do need to be either an expert in an obscure field or be able to keep up with the latest technologies. I do both. I intend to retire as a programmer.

I've been programming for 47 years. I've been offered (and refused) management positions 8 times. I know nothing about management, although I've had it done to me all my life.

Being a programmer all your life is like being a musician. It rarely pays well, it has a lot of issues. Lots of people think of themselves as programmers, just like most people who learn to play an instrument think of themselves as musicians. But there is a vast difference between being able to wrie a program (or play an instrument) and making it into a career.

There are very few musicians who perform throughout their lifetimes. There are very few programmers who write code throughout their lifetimes. You have to love the work.

Mid forties and I've been programming all my life. If you don't want to be in management, don't take a management position. Same goes for architect or whatever else they throw at you.

You will make less money. You may get tired of learning new stuff all the time. I've gone from Domino, PalmOS, C, C++, Java, web stack, Objective C, Swift, and more. It can be exhausting or exhilarating. But no hiring manager cares that I worked on PalmOS back in the day.

>What should I watch for if I want to go down this path?

Watch out for age discrimination. The best way to fight it is to start saving immediately for financial independence if you haven't already. Once you have F.U. money you can work on whatever you want--paid or unpaid, it will not matter.

Collins - The Simple Path to Wealth is a good book with the basics of how to achieve financial independence.

There is an excellent book called "The Peter Principle" that is exactly about this sort of thing. The concept it uses is that people get "promoted to their level of incompetence." In other words, you are a great programmer, so you get promoted to manager because it's a promotion. You are a so so manager. You stay there until you retire, though you would have added a lot more value as a programmer.

It has a few examples of people who managed to avoid getting promoted out of the thing they truly excelled at. One gardener had a personal quirk of failing to pick up his paychecks on time. This drove management crazy and kept him gardening instead of whatever people did who got promoted.

Another individual had an office that looked like a paperwork bomb had gone off. There were untidy stacks of paper everywhere. Management was convinced he was a disorganized mess, though he had a very efficient paperwork system wholly unrelated to the mountains of papers stacked all over the place.

I highly recommend the book. After you have read it to establish a mental framework, you might need to read up on social psychology to come up with a strategy for convincing management that promoting you out if programming is a silly idea.

The hardest part will be getting people to take you seriously if you want to switch companies

I’ve found that though it takes many years there does come a time when you have mastered it. Of course you can’t know every language or the intricacies of every sub discipline (graphics, audio, networking and on and on) but the core algorithms, data structures etc certainly. And then it can start to feel repetitive. It took me over 10 years as a professional dev coding everyday to reach that level. Now that I have I’m ready to do other things and have done. Nothing will stop you from continuing to be a programmer if you want to be, there are people 20-30 years older than me at places I’ve worked. It’s you who decides when it’s time to move on. They said I’ll always be a lifelong programmer just not as a professional (paid) one.