I actually returned to programming after years managing programmers in part because I was unhappy. I realized that the further I got from the machine and _making_ the less happy I was.
So, if you asked me whether I wanted to be 'managing' at 50, I'd say "Hell, no!".
The enjoyment of making things work, learning and shipping it real. I hope I'm still able to feel those things at 80. I never got the same satisfaction and enjoyment from managing people and processes.
Similar experience here - the more "managerial" my job was the more miserable I became.
So I now have a reasonably high level job with a lot of variety but I usually spend a couple of days a week developing stuff - altogether not a bad combination for me. I do manage some people but as they are all smarter than me and very self directed it is actually a pleasure to do.
[NB By far the most stressful job I had was as co-founder and CTO of a VC funded startup]
I don't think this is about "programming" versus "managing".
It's about "actual problem solving, and building things" (which is good and enjoyable at any age) versus "navigating oceans of constantly changing APIs" and getting bitten by minuscule oversights in enormous volumes of documentation, which requires a lot of stamina, and maybe optimism, that you have less of as you get older.
I hate arcane APIs with a passion. I love programming and building things. Always have, always will.
I think one's tastes don't change much with age; what changes is your willingness to put up with things you don't like. Like a grumpy old uncle who says inappropriate things at family reunions, at some point in your life you just stop pretending.
I often see aged programmers are more tolerant with things they dont like,as they know most jobs are just boring from their years of working experience. Lots of them think job is just for paying the bill.
Same here. I am interested in some process stuff, because processes can be "solved" in a similar way to computer problems. But I actively enjoy this kind of thing, and I hope to carry on doing so.
Similar here, in my 40's and I must admit I also struggle with the management divide. However, I'm lucky that I work in a small company so I get to do a variety of work. I also have a lot of domain knowledge (medical imaging) which means I need to be engaged at a technical level. However, even when I'm working on strategic planning or market analysis I also manage to find a "reason" to write some little program to process data rather than just put it in Excel or hack up script to create a Gantt chart rather than use MS Project.
I guess you can take the boy out of coding, but you can't take the coding out of the boy!
32 here, and so far programming is the best thing I've ever done in life. The stress I've experienced has all emerged from my own expectations of myself, from wanting to excel.
My mother is in her late fifties and recently returned to working in a children's daycare after being a manager for many years because working with children was what she was passionate about, and she realised she had advanced away from what made her want to go to work.
I feel the same way about moving away from programming - what I enjoy is digging my hands deep into the rich code, smelling the mix of coffee and ozone, feeling the flourescent glare burn into my retinas - THAT is what makes life worth living!
What is it with fluorescent light and programmers? I left a gig specifically because of a mid-afternoon fluorescent hum that was soul sucking. Decent light and a good ergonomic work environment are so important.
In this case I was primarily thinking of flourescent light from an LCD screen (would have mentioned CRTs, but that would have dated me a bit TOO much), but I agree completely about the life-killing quality of shitty overhead flourescent lamps. Sadly, the office I'm in right now is afflicted, although it mainly means that the ceiling lamps stay turned off and floor lamps are used instead.
I'm with you, I'm rounding 40 myself, and was not happy for the brief couple years of management.
When filling out a 'secret question' for some site, it ask what your ideal job would be. I didn't even blink, it was: developer.
Do I want to be doing this when I'm 50, hells yea.
If I had trillions of dollars, I would still code. It's who I am, it's what makes me happy. If you don't think you'll like development at 50, then you may have picked the wrong career.
Don't do the work because it's expected of you, because it's sexy, or because it's "interesting". Don't do it because your friends are impressed, because the pay's good, or because your friends are there.
Sure, but there's nothing particularly programming-specific about that situation.
It can happen with any profession, and I can't see that it's any more likely for programmers.
[Personal note: I'm my late 40s, and have been a professional programmer my entire working life. I still love it, and can't think of anything else I'd rather do.]
Late 30s represent, yo. The author of the article mentions high stress. My experience differs.
In my case the stress sort of waned by itself. I think I moved a bit towards Wally character from the Dilbert series. I don't overcommit anymore and I certainly gained resistance to "aggressive schedules" and visions of doom and gloom tied to deadline skips. So I stress out less and less and I believe it comes naturally with age.
I think the crux of the matter is your job security and your financial stability (the economy where you live, etc). If you can afford to delay projects as needed without risking your position then of course that takes a lot of pressure off you and things are more enjoyable.
In an ideal world, I'd be set financially by the time I'm 50 and I would work in my own stuff exclusively or almost exclusively.
In my experience it's not so much about missing deadlines with impunity, as negotiating up front what you're willing to commit to delivering. A lot of times you can put off some "nice to have" features without anyone complaining, as long as the core functionality is ready on time. (That may be what you meant by "delaying.")
The other part is renegotiating timelines when they make changes to stuff you've already built.
Financial security helps but the real key is being skilled enough to accomplish a lot without breaking a sweat. As much as possible, build reusable components with nice APIs, even if it means putting in some extra time up front. Always think about how to make your own job easier down the road, and after a while you'll have an easy job.
The point is you have to be prepared to re-select the 'few great tools' you know every decade or so and invest time getting to know them inside out. That can get very tiring as you get older.
How is that different from any other job? Listen even to people in traditionally creative/uplifting jobs...including artists and teachers. It's depressing to hear how much of their time is struggling with data entry/Excel/why-wont-the-font-stay-the-same-size issues...time (and energy and angst) that is probably substantial over their career
I remember an industry teacher once saying to me that "You'll probably never put '10 years experience in Technology X' on a CV." because by the time it's been around for that long it will be pretty much obsolete. The fundamentals of computer science won't change (big-O, synchronised distributed systems, logic etc.) so I suppose it will just come down to re-learning the modern day tech.
But that's the same for lawyers (fundamental laws / processes unchanged, need to be up-to-date on modern rulings and changes), doctors (fundamental human physiology unchanged, need to be up-to-date on modern techniques and drugs) sales assistants (knowing how to greet and assist a member of the public never changes, need to know how to use the latest cash register / Square-up card reader terminal).
I suppose you can't escape it in another industry. I still stand by my point that your skillset as you get older will make you more appropriate for other duties.
I think the skillset as we get older is knowing when to duck.
It might be called wisdom, mentoring, what have you but basically, having been in situation X before, you can give sensible advice to someone just entering situation X.
Reading through all the comments has reinforced my original comment that this kind of "bring it on" passion is heavily correlated to geo-location, culture, industry and day-to-day grind that one is put through.
>> Monetising that is generally harder
Tell me all about it! So, I've heard of elephant graveyards and jet graveyards... Now, where do all those grizzled, veteran (old) programmers go away (other than into management)?
The interesting idea in the post(beyond the programming vs age bit, which is sure to trigger some rage,) is this
"To me, there's an innate frustration in programming. It doesn't stem from having to work out the solutions to difficult problems. That takes careful thought, but it's the same kind of thought a novelist uses to organize a story or to write dialog that rings true. That kind of problem-solving is satisfying, even fun.
But that, unfortunately, is not what most programming is about. It's about trying to come up with a working solution in a problem domain that you don't fully understand and don't have time to understand."
If this is a problem that affects you don't do 'most programming'. Nothing really stops a developer from learning a problem domain with economic potential. Sure you may have to go to school or read some books or get some experience, but so what?
The idea that a programmer always has to work in a half understood domain transforming some one else's ideas into code is just that, an idea. It is a dominant idea, but nothing really stops anyone from mastering an interesting domain in addition to programming.
Knowing how to program is like knowing how to write (in a largely illiterate society, so your knowledge has economic value). Or like knowing how to cast spells. Yes, if you spend all your life scribing other people's thoughts or casting spells to manifest other people's wishes, it could get boring. Could, but doesn't have to be. You don't have to be a scribe just because you know how to write.
I think the reason you are even able(read afford) to move to Hawaii is because you went through a couple of CTO/VP Eng positions, with traditional increasing stress.
I think the point is that if he kept programming (i.e. doing what he enjoyed) rather than taking the CTO/VP positions he might not have needed a break in Hawaii to de-stress.
Any American citizen can move to Hawaii anytime they like. It's not terribly hard to do, especially with a high demand skill that lets you find work anywhere, globally, like being a software engineer.
Some people actually seem to be missing a significant part of his point. He's not talking about "Do you want to be coding at all when you're 50?" He's talking about the dependency management that goes into building something large on the shoulders of others.
That's a lot different from "hacking on your homepage" or throwing together a quick Ruby script utility to do some scraping.
Yes. Maybe not exactly the same thing (because as the author mentions, technology is an ever-changing field), but it's very interesting to see and adapt to that change as it is happening. Especially now when the tech sector is at the core of everything around us.
Yes, because I can't guess what the world will be like in 20 years time, but I am 100% certain that I'll want to be working with the insanely powerful computers that we have then.
No. I'd like to be retired before 50. I'll probably still code when I retire, but it will be in something like Mathematica or R while I sit around learning subjects that interest me.
I'm excited to see all the other folks in this thread who say they're 50 and they're programming! I've been worried that because everyone _else_ thinks "large scale, high stress programming" -- i.e., the kind of programming that's _fun_ -- is a young man's (or woman's) game, I won't be able to have a job like the one I have when I'm 50, and I might need to find some other career I enjoy in order to continue having a job I enjoy when I'm 50.
I'm not looking for advancement, since advancement would be out of programming and into management, nor a pay raise, since programmer salaries are already plenty high. I just want to be doing exactly what I'm now doing in thirty years.
I think it is very important to understand the "real" differences in what it means to program vs. manage. In programming in most cases you are working on projects. Once you deliver the code that project is essentially over (minus support and bug fixing of course). In a management role many of the key activities never really conclude. For example, resource allocation overall and amongst various projects, is something depending on circumstance, you may have to revisit on a weekly or monthly basis. So you don't get the satisfaction of "delivering" anymore and items stay in your inbox much longer. This for me is the key difference.
I know and have worked with coders in their 50s, even 60s. They were very much what I'd call 9-to-5 coders though. They were never given big, important or new projects but as a consequence were never expected to burn the midnight oil.
The main thing that looks unappealing to me about being a hacker decades from now is the constant cycle of learning. I'm on probably my 3rd generation upheaval. I've worked on a daily basis in a team of programmers with C, C++, C#, Java and Python. Getting familiar enough with those languages to do more than just tinker took a lot of effort - even for the languages that are pretty similar e.g. C# and Java. I'm now looking to do more front to back website coding (away from pure desktop/server stuff) so I'm trying a few things out before choosing on the main stack of technologies I need to master.
In my early thirties I still have the enthusiasm to do this but I find it hard to picture doing the same ten years from now with the same smile on my face.
I agree with the thrust of everything you mentioned. Just wanted to chime in.
>>They were never given big, important or new projects<<
Basically you have answered the OP's main angst. There are names for this kind of thing, you know ("Ageism"?). Also, because of these kinds of actions, these people are simply losing their 'relevance' within the context of the organisation's overall strategic direction. Now how bad do you think it is for one's morale and self-actualisation? In a way, damned if you do, damned if you don't, isn' it?
Also, in some orgs, the "seniors" are "expected to understand the architecture" (read: more arcana and API call memorisations) so they can "guide"/"mentor" the "juniors" and "participate" in "propelling" the organisation, blah blah. And this invariably leads to what the OP's saying >>It's about skimming great oceans of APIs that you could spend years studying and learning, but the market will have moved on by then and that's no fun anyway<<
I'm happy for you. But sooner or later it gets to you. No one can say when/how/why, but it does. Happens to the best, happens to everyone else a little sooner. Until then, enjoy the ride. :-)
There are some underlying concepts, foundation ideas which didn't change much since 1960-70-80s, the time when they have been discovered, studied and defined.
Yes, people are piling up tons of crap in order to get money, and this is how we got a millions lines of meaningless Java code which no one could understand or maintain, which seems to work well only because most of unit-tests passed and hardware is so cheap.
I don't even want to mention current Javascript madness.
At the same time, however, almost nothing were added to the ideas expressed by John McCarthy, and followers.
Yes. They are stuffing tons of useless crap into new Scheme standard, as they did with Common Lisp, but, the underlying ideas and the principles of "less is more" and "good enough" remain unshaken, like mountains in Nepal.)
In a very rare occasions we still can witness some miracles. For example, the source code of this site - the engine and the language translator in which it written is less than one megabyte. (just imagine what amount of traffic it handles and how much money already created).
There are also Plan9, nginx and few other wonders.
So, in ones 50s one, perhaps, should enjoy knowing and applying these principles and ideas and produce ones own small wonders. Or teach others, as enlightened people like Gerald Jay Sussman or Brian Harvey do.
That's how I feel. I don't want to be a programmer when I'm 50, or even, preferably, when I'm 30. Trying to run to the top of a dune made of quicksand just doesn't seem like a good career move.
(Hell, every few months I find something new to feel obsolete about, usually to do with the fact that most programming nowadays seems to be web-dev and I'm just not into web-dev.)
On the other hand, I'd love to keep being a computer scientist until.... I don't even know what age. Sure, eventually I'll have a family and other priorities to take care of, but the wonderful thing about the scientific frontier is that it doesn't actually move that quickly. In science, ideas have to actually be tested and percolate through for a while before they become something ever single practitioner has to know.
Would you mind sharing the the "few other wonders"?
I've been able to pull many programming lessons from the other activity I enjoy, woodworking. When I first started, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of items in catalogs and stores. I didn't know where to begin!
And then I discovered Japanese woodworking, and traditional woodworking, and people like James Krenov and Roy Underhill.
It is impressive what people have built with a small set of simple, sharp tools.
I love seeing these gems, regardless of the domain!
It's about skimming great oceans of APIs that you could spend years studying and learning, but the market will have moved on by then and that's no fun anyway, so you cut and paste from examples and manage to get by without a full picture of the architecture supporting your app.
Well stated. Man, do I feel like that. But I think this is a universal problem now. Information is freely available, and there's so much of it. An endless buffet, and it doesn't matter what field you get in to.
It's not so much the field but rather your role within it. Someone with many years experience as a programmer working within a specific industry might have the experience necessary to make sound, informed technology decisions.
Not saying that would be an easy job or not stressful but it's a better use of that persons skills and experience.
There are many different kinds of programming, some are fun and some are not.
If you really want to be doing this when you're 50 make sure you get good enough that you can pick the projects that are fun. If by the time you are 50 and you've been doing this for 3 decades you are still gluing api's that's not the fault of 'programming', that's a direct result of choices made earlier.
And one more thing: on the scale of things that you could be doing, look at your parents, grandparents and their grandparents and what they were doing when they were 50. Suddenly that api gluing doesn't look so bad at all.
@Jacquesm,
I agree with your FU money concept and I am actively working on that. I think this comment is a byproduct (side-effect?! (-;) of your having achieved FI.
But what you mentioned here is what I would consider "Let them eat cake instead" advice. :)
Not well thought out.
Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion, and besides historical perspectives are based on whatever set of lenses you choose to wear. Actually, our grandparents (even parents) had more time in their lives, more variety in their lives that was completely unrelated to their 9-5 routines, their professional lives were (mostly) on autopilot, so they had more free time to pursue all kinds of hobbies and tinkering, while still working on a daily job! So, yes I am looking at grandparents too, but I chose to wear different lenses.
Exactly what I wanted to point out, especially in the context of his original comment about "choosing your own projects that you like to work on" (paraphrased).
When I wrote that line, it was really not about grandparents or about relative quality of life, but of "circumstances" that one finds themselves in, which then go on to dictate various other things in the person's life as well.
@Both,
That has been my point exactly. All of this "my life is worse or better than before/my-ancestors" is context/situation/location dependent to a very large extent. Same goes for jacquesm expert advice on "you can pick the projects that are fun".
259 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] threadI actually returned to programming after years managing programmers in part because I was unhappy. I realized that the further I got from the machine and _making_ the less happy I was.
So, if you asked me whether I wanted to be 'managing' at 50, I'd say "Hell, no!".
The enjoyment of making things work, learning and shipping it real. I hope I'm still able to feel those things at 80. I never got the same satisfaction and enjoyment from managing people and processes.
So I now have a reasonably high level job with a lot of variety but I usually spend a couple of days a week developing stuff - altogether not a bad combination for me. I do manage some people but as they are all smarter than me and very self directed it is actually a pleasure to do.
[NB By far the most stressful job I had was as co-founder and CTO of a VC funded startup]
It's about "actual problem solving, and building things" (which is good and enjoyable at any age) versus "navigating oceans of constantly changing APIs" and getting bitten by minuscule oversights in enormous volumes of documentation, which requires a lot of stamina, and maybe optimism, that you have less of as you get older.
I hate arcane APIs with a passion. I love programming and building things. Always have, always will.
I think one's tastes don't change much with age; what changes is your willingness to put up with things you don't like. Like a grumpy old uncle who says inappropriate things at family reunions, at some point in your life you just stop pretending.
I guess you can take the boy out of coding, but you can't take the coding out of the boy!
My mother is in her late fifties and recently returned to working in a children's daycare after being a manager for many years because working with children was what she was passionate about, and she realised she had advanced away from what made her want to go to work.
I feel the same way about moving away from programming - what I enjoy is digging my hands deep into the rich code, smelling the mix of coffee and ozone, feeling the flourescent glare burn into my retinas - THAT is what makes life worth living!
When filling out a 'secret question' for some site, it ask what your ideal job would be. I didn't even blink, it was: developer.
Do I want to be doing this when I'm 50, hells yea.
If I had trillions of dollars, I would still code. It's who I am, it's what makes me happy. If you don't think you'll like development at 50, then you may have picked the wrong career.
Don't do the work because it's expected of you, because it's sexy, or because it's "interesting". Don't do it because your friends are impressed, because the pay's good, or because your friends are there.
Do it because it enables you to do what you love.
It can happen with any profession, and I can't see that it's any more likely for programmers.
[Personal note: I'm my late 40s, and have been a professional programmer my entire working life. I still love it, and can't think of anything else I'd rather do.]
In my case the stress sort of waned by itself. I think I moved a bit towards Wally character from the Dilbert series. I don't overcommit anymore and I certainly gained resistance to "aggressive schedules" and visions of doom and gloom tied to deadline skips. So I stress out less and less and I believe it comes naturally with age.
In an ideal world, I'd be set financially by the time I'm 50 and I would work in my own stuff exclusively or almost exclusively.
You nailed it. +1 :)
My own comment further down below was exactly on similar lines.
The other part is renegotiating timelines when they make changes to stuff you've already built.
Financial security helps but the real key is being skilled enough to accomplish a lot without breaking a sweat. As much as possible, build reusable components with nice APIs, even if it means putting in some extra time up front. Always think about how to make your own job easier down the road, and after a while you'll have an easy job.
I hope to mitigate the frustrations by simplicity - the idea of a few great tools I know inside and out
I remember an industry teacher once saying to me that "You'll probably never put '10 years experience in Technology X' on a CV." because by the time it's been around for that long it will be pretty much obsolete. The fundamentals of computer science won't change (big-O, synchronised distributed systems, logic etc.) so I suppose it will just come down to re-learning the modern day tech.
But that's the same for lawyers (fundamental laws / processes unchanged, need to be up-to-date on modern rulings and changes), doctors (fundamental human physiology unchanged, need to be up-to-date on modern techniques and drugs) sales assistants (knowing how to greet and assist a member of the public never changes, need to know how to use the latest cash register / Square-up card reader terminal).
I suppose you can't escape it in another industry. I still stand by my point that your skillset as you get older will make you more appropriate for other duties.
It might be called wisdom, mentoring, what have you but basically, having been in situation X before, you can give sensible advice to someone just entering situation X.
Monetising that is generally harder
>> Monetising that is generally harder
Tell me all about it! So, I've heard of elephant graveyards and jet graveyards... Now, where do all those grizzled, veteran (old) programmers go away (other than into management)?
:)
I just hope my wrists hold out that long.
"To me, there's an innate frustration in programming. It doesn't stem from having to work out the solutions to difficult problems. That takes careful thought, but it's the same kind of thought a novelist uses to organize a story or to write dialog that rings true. That kind of problem-solving is satisfying, even fun.
But that, unfortunately, is not what most programming is about. It's about trying to come up with a working solution in a problem domain that you don't fully understand and don't have time to understand."
If this is a problem that affects you don't do 'most programming'. Nothing really stops a developer from learning a problem domain with economic potential. Sure you may have to go to school or read some books or get some experience, but so what?
The idea that a programmer always has to work in a half understood domain transforming some one else's ideas into code is just that, an idea. It is a dominant idea, but nothing really stops anyone from mastering an interesting domain in addition to programming.
Knowing how to program is like knowing how to write (in a largely illiterate society, so your knowledge has economic value). Or like knowing how to cast spells. Yes, if you spend all your life scribing other people's thoughts or casting spells to manifest other people's wishes, it could get boring. Could, but doesn't have to be. You don't have to be a scribe just because you know how to write.
I had a large portion of the 'middle' of my career in management, including a couple CTO/VP Eng positions, with the traditional increasing stress.
So I moved to Hawaii for nearly a decade, got rid of the stress, rediscovered programming, and I'm happy again.
That's a lot different from "hacking on your homepage" or throwing together a quick Ruby script utility to do some scraping.
I think we're lucky to be in such a creative and interesting profession where you get to learn lots (and it pays comparatively well too).
I've written about the joy of programming in "Why I Love Coding" http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-coding/
I'm not looking for advancement, since advancement would be out of programming and into management, nor a pay raise, since programmer salaries are already plenty high. I just want to be doing exactly what I'm now doing in thirty years.
The main thing that looks unappealing to me about being a hacker decades from now is the constant cycle of learning. I'm on probably my 3rd generation upheaval. I've worked on a daily basis in a team of programmers with C, C++, C#, Java and Python. Getting familiar enough with those languages to do more than just tinker took a lot of effort - even for the languages that are pretty similar e.g. C# and Java. I'm now looking to do more front to back website coding (away from pure desktop/server stuff) so I'm trying a few things out before choosing on the main stack of technologies I need to master.
In my early thirties I still have the enthusiasm to do this but I find it hard to picture doing the same ten years from now with the same smile on my face.
>>They were never given big, important or new projects<< Basically you have answered the OP's main angst. There are names for this kind of thing, you know ("Ageism"?). Also, because of these kinds of actions, these people are simply losing their 'relevance' within the context of the organisation's overall strategic direction. Now how bad do you think it is for one's morale and self-actualisation? In a way, damned if you do, damned if you don't, isn' it?
Also, in some orgs, the "seniors" are "expected to understand the architecture" (read: more arcana and API call memorisations) so they can "guide"/"mentor" the "juniors" and "participate" in "propelling" the organisation, blah blah. And this invariably leads to what the OP's saying >>It's about skimming great oceans of APIs that you could spend years studying and learning, but the market will have moved on by then and that's no fun anyway<<
There are some underlying concepts, foundation ideas which didn't change much since 1960-70-80s, the time when they have been discovered, studied and defined.
Yes, people are piling up tons of crap in order to get money, and this is how we got a millions lines of meaningless Java code which no one could understand or maintain, which seems to work well only because most of unit-tests passed and hardware is so cheap.
I don't even want to mention current Javascript madness.
At the same time, however, almost nothing were added to the ideas expressed by John McCarthy, and followers.
Yes. They are stuffing tons of useless crap into new Scheme standard, as they did with Common Lisp, but, the underlying ideas and the principles of "less is more" and "good enough" remain unshaken, like mountains in Nepal.)
In a very rare occasions we still can witness some miracles. For example, the source code of this site - the engine and the language translator in which it written is less than one megabyte. (just imagine what amount of traffic it handles and how much money already created).
There are also Plan9, nginx and few other wonders.
So, in ones 50s one, perhaps, should enjoy knowing and applying these principles and ideas and produce ones own small wonders. Or teach others, as enlightened people like Gerald Jay Sussman or Brian Harvey do.
(Hell, every few months I find something new to feel obsolete about, usually to do with the fact that most programming nowadays seems to be web-dev and I'm just not into web-dev.)
On the other hand, I'd love to keep being a computer scientist until.... I don't even know what age. Sure, eventually I'll have a family and other priorities to take care of, but the wonderful thing about the scientific frontier is that it doesn't actually move that quickly. In science, ideas have to actually be tested and percolate through for a while before they become something ever single practitioner has to know.
I've been able to pull many programming lessons from the other activity I enjoy, woodworking. When I first started, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of items in catalogs and stores. I didn't know where to begin!
And then I discovered Japanese woodworking, and traditional woodworking, and people like James Krenov and Roy Underhill.
It is impressive what people have built with a small set of simple, sharp tools.
I love seeing these gems, regardless of the domain!
Well stated. Man, do I feel like that. But I think this is a universal problem now. Information is freely available, and there's so much of it. An endless buffet, and it doesn't matter what field you get in to.
Not saying that would be an easy job or not stressful but it's a better use of that persons skills and experience.
There are many different kinds of programming, some are fun and some are not.
If you really want to be doing this when you're 50 make sure you get good enough that you can pick the projects that are fun. If by the time you are 50 and you've been doing this for 3 decades you are still gluing api's that's not the fault of 'programming', that's a direct result of choices made earlier.
And one more thing: on the scale of things that you could be doing, look at your parents, grandparents and their grandparents and what they were doing when they were 50. Suddenly that api gluing doesn't look so bad at all.
But what you mentioned here is what I would consider "Let them eat cake instead" advice. :)
Not well thought out.
Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion, and besides historical perspectives are based on whatever set of lenses you choose to wear. Actually, our grandparents (even parents) had more time in their lives, more variety in their lives that was completely unrelated to their 9-5 routines, their professional lives were (mostly) on autopilot, so they had more free time to pursue all kinds of hobbies and tinkering, while still working on a daily job! So, yes I am looking at grandparents too, but I chose to wear different lenses.
When I wrote that line, it was really not about grandparents or about relative quality of life, but of "circumstances" that one finds themselves in, which then go on to dictate various other things in the person's life as well.
And I think you got it :-)