HN Explorer

Poll: How old are you?

292 points by withoutfriction ↗ HN
Four years ago [1], two years ago [2], and today.

Tomorrow I'd love to poll on where in the world.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175588

FYI: for anyone in the 13-18ish category, if you are interested in a startup mentor (or a technical one w/ rails/node.js/meteor.js) I'm working with a few people at Stanford willing to take on mentees. Shoot me an email (hn@withoutfriction.com)

234 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] thread
acheron
My birthday was last weekend and you set the categories so that I just moved up. Thanks. joints creak
dasil003
Whoah, I'm about to make my third category transition while still working for the same startup.
djKianoosh
someone should close the older polls, no?
tptacek
We had one of these just three months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734

mherdeg
And there was a great discussion about whether or not it was a good idea to let people vote twice.
brechin
And plenty of discussion on how we can't trust their results any more

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5537023

  The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change.
nswanberg
Did pg ever make good on his promise to embiggen the fonts of those responders who claimed they were over 80?
pvnick
There was an article on here yesterday that said something along the lines of "if you're older than 23 most startups won't even give you the time of day" or some tripe of the sort. I find that to be a negative, untrue stereotype, and it's nice to see the data back up my opinion.
jypepin
yea it was in the article about why working in a big company http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/33111/7-Reasons-Why-You...
pvnick
Yes, thank you, I didn't feel like digging around for it.
tomphoolery
What an awfully misinformed article. :(
Cookingboy
Care to elaborate? From my personal experience (currently working for Google and used to work for a YC startup, also worked for a 80 person small company and another silicon valley giant), that article is almost dead on.

You really DO learn a lot when you have more smart people around you to learn from.

dllthomas
In what way does this data back up your opinion?
pvnick
For the following reasons:

1) assume that the HN readership satisfactorily correlates to the startup demographic at large

2) the majority of the respondants answered 26-30, as was also the case in the poll that tptacek referenced elsewhere in this thread

3) the longtail is heavily skewed towards the older folks, rather than towards the younger side

dllthomas
See, I worry that with 1 you are conflating two "startup demographics" - people who interact on HN are probably interested in startups, but many (most?) of them aren't working for startups.
dlhavema
i definitely fit in that category
dllthomas
Likewise. I'm working at a small company, and the tech's interesting, but it's really not a "start-up" in the sense used here for a host of reasons.
iyulaev
Kind of by definition though - I think there are more hackers at 30+25 = 55 rather than 30-25 = 5.
DigitalJack
The highest bin does not necessarily a majority make. Right now that bin is less than a third.

Just clarifying the facts. Not disputing your conclusion.

jborden13
All of the developers at my startup are 40+. But I've always put a heavy weighting on experience being more valuable than being inexpensive. The indirect costs of younger developers can be, at times, quite high and staggering. Regardless of age/experience, if you can get shit done quickly and correctly then age is not relevant.
jpdoctor
God these types of polls make me feel like a geezer.

Just in case any of you whippersnappers are wondering what it feels like to start hacking in your teens and continue (in one form or another) to be hacking into your late 40s: It is pretty much the same after the first cup of coffee in the morning. Where it differs is the lull in the afternoon makes me want to nap. (So I do.)

The drag is that until I look in the mirror? I'd tell you I'm 20-something, and I have to genuinely remind myself that I'm pushing 50.

djbender
Age is only a number.
gilrain
And an approximate measure of the gradual deterioration of your body.
rollo_tommasi
And, sadly, the sharper edges of the mind...
diydsp
... and, happily, the accumulation of wisdom to direct the remaining sharpness ...
fluidcruft
Perhaps sharpness impairs wisdom.
talles
So, again, just a number :)
leed25d
Nothing sad about it. You are actually better able to see the big picture I would say.
moheeb
No, I would say you are better able to understand the big picture, but less able to see it ;)
codebolt
Not just any number. It's the number of whole orbits you've made around the sun since leaving your mothers womb.
pvnick
Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together?
beat
I'm 48, and I haven't encountered ageism yet. I haven't seen it, among good technical people. The hard part is that by the time you're in your late 40s, you've probably peaked out on advancement. Even if you go into management (which isn't really "advancement"), you're just going to ceiling out there instead.
emp_
Hell, I feel like peaking with 31. Constantly leaning towards an own business from where I stand.
narrator
Once you reach a certain salary as an engineer the only way to make more money is to go in as an owner either as an early hire in a startup or as a founder. You can also get stock options and wait for your company to get bought. Other than that it's pretty much all down hill.
kfcm
Or use the route I went: start your own consulting business.
beat
That's the route of a lot of good people. I know so many great consultants in their 40s-50s, with superb skills and rich backgrounds.
eksith 

  > among good technical people
Good technical people appreciate others who are of equal or greater skill. And I've noticed older (no offense to you folks; I'm speaking relatively) people tend to abhor office politics and the like. Things got done because they needed to get done, not to further some hidden, convoluted, agenda.

Most of the people in the upper tiers got there in their early to mid 30s.

vacri
I think it's because generally as you get older, you realise that winning office politics points doesn't really give you any reward. Any small moment of gain is fleeting, and you exchange that for destructive behaviour.

It's not to say that older people can't be petty, just that proactively engaging in politics seems to be seen as not particularly worth it. My frame of reference is that I've just turned 40 - I will probably feel differently again in 10 years :)

YZF
I've seen a lot of people around that age strike out on their own and start new businesses. I think that would be the "advancement" path for those who are interested in that.
beat
That's exactly where I'm at. Building a startup from 20 years of accumulated experience in enterprise. I see a massive pain point and no tool that really addresses it - just a bunch of hacks and workarounds that everyone uses.

I like a lot of things about enterprise development, but I dislike a bunch of things, too. If this all works, I get to create a startup environment and total control (much more pleasant working conditions) and the potential for more substantial reward, but I can keep working on problems I like to work on.

kfcm
When first starting out many years (decades?!?) ago, I experienced what could best be called "reverse agism". Guys in their 40s-50s were concerned about hiring a 23-25 year old "wet-behind-the-ears" high-energy "kid" who might make them look bad. And there weren't many twenty-somethings around

Funny thing is, now that I'm in that 45-50 range, things have inverted. Now I rarely see someone above 40 or 45, unless it's management or infrastructure. It's all people in their late 20s, early 30s.

kfcm
Another consideration is it all depends upon where you're located--geographically, company-wise, and technology area. At least in my observation.

Infrastructure tends to have less ageism than development/software engineering. Large corporations relatively less than start-ups (agism in corps is usually tied to/masked by salary level; "it's about cutting costs"). Midwest/rural areas less than large metros and "hip locations" (due mainly to smaller pools of potential employees).

VLM
"Midwest/rural areas less than large metros and "hip locations" (due mainly to smaller pools of potential employees)."

Unfortunately that has not been my experience at all. Aside from personal experience, I read constantly on HN about how you can walk in off the street and get a job in SV and NYC if you have any skills at all.

To say that's not the experience here would be an understatement. You pretty much have to know someone. One advantage of being in this game since '81 is I know a lot of people. A BSCS from a decent school will get you a job in midwest/rural, its just going to be entry level helpdesk resetting email passwords, or pulling cat5 cable. Probably about half of grads are underemployed, I see them at work all the time.

Not to say there's no advantages; if you can get one of the "good jobs" the standard of living is spectacular in midwest/rural compared to the coasts, and there's better recreation (well, depends on your personal likes/dislikes, etc). Culture is better, generally.

Every once in a while, I take a 90 minute, 100 MPH commuter train into downtown Chicago and remind myself why I don't want to live in a big city. Or go to a conference on the coasts, or visit Europe again. I don't live in a big city; that's why I can easily afford that kind of lifestyle.

jpdoctor
Great questions, answers inline.

> Have you encountered any agism in your line of work?

None, but I might be a weird case. When I finished grad school, I was hired by TI, then Bell Labs. Both treated me like royalty. Because I am not satisfied with being treated like royalty, I went out and founded a company during 2000. I raised a ton of money from VCs (money was free back then). Bootstrapped another. So I've been running my own businesses ever since.

> Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff?

A bunch of years in there were hardware hacking. So lots of C and C++ through the 90s, some perl for maintainance. Never saw the need for trendy stuff until I saw Ruby on Rails. That made light work of projects I had in front of me.

> Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together?

Largest management position was CTO of an 85 person company. I'm happy to manage people, and believe that I can manage over the range of herding-cats to drill-Sargent. I definitely prefer the role of Field Marshall to General, ie rolling in the mud with the troops compared to suit-and-tie rub-elbows-with-those-who-need-their-elbows-rubbed.

Lately though: All hacking + customer management. We're growing, so I suspect managing more people is going to be back in my future.

pvnick
Thank you for your thoughtful response!
Oculus
Yes, thank you for your short write up! Really interesting read :)
mindcrime
Another "old person" chiming in...

Have you encountered any agism in your line of work?

Not really, and not in a negative sense. I did have an experience once where my boss sent me out to help one of our younger consultants on an engagement because, as he put it, the client "wants to see somebody with some grey in their beard". IOW, my presence was largely not needed in the technical sense, but I was there to contribute "gravitas" and comfort to the client.

Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff?

I reject your distinction between "trendy" and "entrprisey". Enterprise software and systems rock, and there's significant overlap at the systems level anyway. You may see Scala, Hadoop, Mahout, Mesos, Spark, S4, Clojure, etc. as "trendy, non enterprise" technologies, while I'm spending my time thinking of ways to use that stuff in the enterprise. :-)

Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together?

I have never had, and will never have, any real desire to be in "management" at someone else's company. Now, being a founder/CEO, that's a different story. I love the idea of building a company, and building the kind of company I always wanted to work for. And I've always been fascinated by marketing and some other aspects of the business world. So for me to now be a founder and in a position to run a company, is a real blast in many ways (in other ways, it's a long, hard, tough, painful, slow slog).

tehwalrus
> "I was there to...comfort[ ]the client."

:( it's sad that this is sometimes required. Agism works both ways, I guess.

zwieback
For me it's actually better in my late 40s. I've seen enough fads come and go that I don't feel like I have to chase after them anymore.
incompatible
Fads come but they never seem to go. Even COBOL is still out there in daily use. EVERTHING is still out there in daily use.
drumdance
I can relate. I once saw a quote, maybe from Garrison Keillor?

"Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened."

drumdance
On the flip side, one thing getting older does is give you perspective about what's really important in life. I definitely am much more attentive to health and relationships, for example.
jpdoctor
Very much so.

Great quote btw. It made me google it-- seems Cory Harvey Armstrong. is the author, whoever that is.

elboru
Have you noticed any speed decrement in your learning curves (learning new languages or frameworks)?
guelo
I feel like I learn new tech faster now, though it's probably just because I've seen similar things before. I feel like I'm doing my best work now.
jpdoctor
> Have you noticed any speed decrement in your learning curves (learning new languages or frameworks)?

Hard to tell, but a speedup if anything. Once you know 5 or 6 languages, another one is pretty easy to pick up by looking at it.

I've posted elsewhere: Most recent endeavor is RoR, and that was fast. It's hard for me to differentiate whether that's because I'm Mr Smart&Experienced or because Michael Hartl rocks. I suspect the latter.

moens
41 here. I have found the same thing. There are so many things in languages, paradigms, tech as a whole that are familiar... problems that took too long to solve 20 years ago are easier now because I know the feel of the problem, how to approach it, etc.

Pretty sure I cannot put in as many hours though. Wish I had learned to put in fewer earlier.

crb3
No, what I (currently 64) have noticed is a swift reduction in unbroken-focus time. Unlike in my 20's and 30's, I have personal responsibilities, now, y'see.

We're not designed to preemptively multitask; I just crash my stack when I try. We can cooperatively multitask, but the context-switching has to planned ahead. Even then, interrupts are costly. Used to be there was nothing between me and putting in a sleepless weekend on a project except me and my fatigue, which enthusiasm overcame easily. Now I've got kids and elderly parents and they're not only interrupting, they're nonmaskable. Stack-crash, context-dump and a profound weariness from loss of momentum, next stop.

I love it when I can shove in the earplugs, unplug the phone and dive in on a new learning adventure -- I hunger for that, it's part of who I am. Those times when I can trust the world to handshake timeslices and mask interrupts are very rare these days, however. From the outside it might look like slower learning; from in here, it's that the learning seldom gets any runtime.

tritchey
I'm sliding down the other side of that distribution myself.

One evening I was having dinner with my wife and her nearly 70 year old parents. Her mom made a comment that has stuck with me:

"You know, we still think and feel the same way we did when we were your age."

JoeAltmaier
Yeah; but those thoughts are now 50 years out of date. That's why old people feel different; they are from another time.
SiVal
The older I get, the more interested I am in the thoughts of people from another time. I discovered long ago that there is far less continuity of wisdom than young people realize. There is a common assumption among young people that the best ideas of the past are carried forward while the failed ideas are left behind. This is true to some extent, but it is much less true than most young people seem to think.

People vastly underestimate the gap between their theories and reality. Experience forces them to change some of their theories to ideas that seem less plausible but that turn out to correspond better to reality. When they try to pass these improved ideas on to younger people without the same experience, they are often rejected. They sound less plausible than what they and their young peers take for granted.

If the younger people go on to have the same experiences as their parents, they might eventually recognize the wisdom of their elders' ideas, but if not, they might never realize how wrong they are and will easily pass the plausible-sounding bad ideas on to their own children. At some point, most of society can have a good chuckle at the old people's "out of date" ideas.

Since each generation faces different experiences, we have a mechanism whereby wisdom born of experience keeps being lost and replaced by plausible-sounding bad ideas.

You also have the mechanism whereby people point at one area that has clearly improved as evidence that today's ideas are better than those of the past. After all, today's telephone hardware is vastly better than the Lisp Machine of 50 years ago, so the design of HTML/CSS/Javascript platform must represent a substantial improvement on the best ideas from Common Lisp with the bad ideas removed.

No? Well then there's another mechanism whereby wisdom born of experience in the past can be replaced by worse ideas that just happen to end up carried to popularity by historical circumstance.

Just as I study how old-time engineers solved technical problems without using today's technologies, I try to study the writings of "old people" from ancient times to modern, and I try to learn from the "out of date" ideas that came from experiences I've never had. I find it contains more real wisdom than the taken-for-granted trendy theories popular among today's young elites. That of course makes me "feel different" and my thoughts "out of date", too.

dman
That sounds very interesting. Any examples?
JoeAltmaier
Pah. Why are old-people's 'experiences' not also 'plausible-sounding bad ideas' from another time? In fact, that's the only mechanism your pessimism permits.

I'd guess, instead, that these modern bad ideas are possibly good ideas that just don't jibe with your experience.

SiVal
Currently popular ideas are not the result of a historical meme ratchet, whereby ideas have only been replaced by better ideas. A cursory knowledge of history provides ample evidence that bad ideas have often reemerged and become the orthodoxy of the time, supplanting earlier hard-earned wisdom.

With that history in mind, the common notion that today's popular ideas are all wiser than any of the past can be seen as absurdly unlikely. Does that imply that all old ideas are better than new replacements? Of course not. It implies that some of them are.

It implies that if you are more interested in wisdom than in popularity, you should look beyond what is taken for granted as the orthodoxy of your own generation.

lesterbuck
It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.
marshray
I was napping hard in the afternoons and staying up late as a teenager. I was hoping that would get better with age like it does for some people. But it hasn't for me.
girvo
Damnit. I've started doing that nap thing, and I'm 22.
smokinjoe
Just turned 30 today and I don't even get to move up to a new selection.
krapp
I just turned 36 and I get shoved into a new demographic box for almost everything age-related on the net, now.

It's very depressing, only a couple of boxes left until the pine one...

DanielBMarkham
So, at the time I looked, roughly 500 20-something punks, and roughly 50 of us 40-something geezers.

Dang, odds are that nobody I meet in the old folk's home is going to know anything at all about functional programming or Lean Startups.

gwright
Hmm. New startup idea: Hacker Retirement Community
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
hlm
65 and still hacking ;)
ferdo
I'm so old I still reckon in baud.
timothybone
I'm still young so I can't say for sure, but I reckon the brain's baud rate peaks in a similar fashion as the heart's peak BPM. That being said, I think more efficient cycle clocking, a.k.a wisdom, makes up the difference.
ianstallings
I'm about 220 lbs old. I started at 180 lbs!
FrankenPC
I hear that! 240 lbs old and 75% more gray.
ianstallings
For a second I thought you said gravy. Either way, yes!
bougiefever
I'm so old I use a combination of lit and unlit candles to represent my age in binary on my birthday cake so I don't set off the smoke alarm.
baddox
Seven candles ought to do it for most people for a while.
crb3
A coupla years ago I told 'em they could use one candle if they striped it blue, red, black, gold. They didn't get it.
kropotkin
Hacker News has a low tolerance for this kind of humor. You just couldn't resist, could you?
crb3
Well, I was hoping for a cake that was ohm-made...
edw519
58, writing more code, having more fun, reaching more people, & making more $ than ever, all of which still seem limitless:

  edw519's Hacker Quality of Life
  
  |                            ?? 
  |                          **  
  |                        **
  |                      **
  |                    **
  |                  **
  |                ** 
  |              **     
  |            **
  |          **
  |     *****
  -------------------------------
     10   20   30   40   50   60
rjh29
I know you are well respected around here, but your ability to sound like a douche seems limitless too.
aaronblohowiak
As someone who fears ageism and my role as a hacker in light of the aging process, I am taking his post to be a beacon of light and hope, not anything resembling a 'douche'.
zallarak
Trust me, anyone who perpetuates ageism is somewhat misled. A diversity in the ages of employees is probably the ideal situation, because I can think of advantages/disadvantages the presence of a certain each age group brings to a team. On the other hand, if you find yourself losing energy/physical fitness and your abilities, its your prerogative to remedy that.
davidcuddeback
I'm a younger (~30) engineer who's enjoyed working with a few older engineers. I'd be interested in hearing more about what you perceive to be the relative advantages/disadvantages of each age group.
sillysaurus
From direct experience: you can't group by age. Some older engineers are douchebags. Some are the nicest people you've ever met. Some are incredibly talented. Some aren't.
podperson
Where's the bump for "kids go to college"?
mahyarm
That is really parent dependent. My mother took it really hard when I eventually moved out of the house and when I moved out of the same city.
podperson
There's going to be some kind of bump though...
throwit1979
I don't think Ed has kids, which is partially why his quality of life is so high.
pestaa
You can't just make that many assumptions in one short sentence. Granted, I don't have kids, either. ;)
D9u
Perhaps his children, like mine, are now adults with children of their own?
gbog
I don't think you are right, I think you are misled by some anti kid cliche.
klibertp
There was a better article somewhere, but first google result on the topic should suffice: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2284776/Can-parent...
gbog
As stated by Kahneman happiness (pain) level is felt in retrospect as an average of the most happy (painful) moment and happiness (pain) level of the last moment. If you have kids you have an easy happiness peak (say their first smile) and are likely to be less lonely in your old days.
pvnick
I thought it was a well-humored, insightful post and that your personal attack was completely uncalled for.
Udo
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "ability to sound like a douche" or is that just a random personal attack?

When I think about high-karma HN users with douchy tendencies edw519 is not someone who comes to mind. I mean, in any account exceeding a couple of hundred posts it's probably easy to find some less than stellar content, but I don't remember edw519 ever making a post as low as you just did.

DigitalJack
Crap, sorry about the down vote. I fat fingered my phone.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
VladRussian2
>edw519 ever making a post as low as you just did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529609

Udo
At least quote me less misleadingly: "I don't remember edw519 ever making a post as low as you just did." - and it looks like you had to dig pretty deep to find something to make your counterpoint, too.

And the post itself? Even if we're retroactively judging someone for voicing a less than flattering opinion about a person who is by now dead, it's not nearly as low as this ad hominem attack above. Is that the worst you could find after putting in the energy to research that guy's content a year back? I probably said worse things this month, and most likely so did you.

I already speculated how we all made some comments that we're probably not proud of, so I'm really not getting what your point is.

VladRussian2
>after putting in the energy to research that guy's content a year back?

this statement and your whole post is just brain fart - i.e. outlandish conclusion made without knowing any facts or even basic understanding of context.

The HN community response to Aaron's cry for help was spearheaded by the above mentioned top-voted comment and was basically a prudish guilty verdict from a jury of his peers. It has prominent place in the history and is known outside of this echo-chamber, so no need for the "research".

Udo
Dial down the bile, Vlad. You're right, I didn't know the context of that post. Still, that doesn't neutralize my argument - we all have skeletons in the closet. Just because someone made a wrong call some time ago doesn't make it OK to engage in unqualified personal attacks, especially not if they've been a good community member otherwise.

I know, it's not fashionable to acknowledge the importance of civility, but I for one do believe it's a key factor in keeping a community productive and worthwhile. It's hard to believe that rjh29 would have engaged in that level of vitriol face to face, just as it is hard to imagine you dismissing my entire line of reasoning by selectively declaring one argument a brain fart if we had just met at the pub for a beer.

It's sometimes easy to forget there are real people on the other side of that screen and we didn't all come here just to have anonymous fights.

tinco
It wasn't a prudish guilty verdict. It was a reasonable response from the community, given the circumstances and the knowledge of the case at that time.

I don't think at all voicing your reasonable opinion on a public forum counts at all as a douche move. Not if it later turns out this opinion missed crucial information about the mental state and fragile support framework of Aaron. And especially not if that opinion was obviously shared by many members of said forum.

Claiming Edward spearheaded a negative community response to a desperate cry for help of a dying man is ludicrous. And I think you should apologize for insinuating that, as I am sure expressing these thoughts puts significant torment on Edward.

VladRussian2
>Not if it later turns out this opinion missed crucial information about the mental state and fragile support framework of Aaron

it is not about "later" and specific Aaron's mental state. It is about very specific pattern of "holier than thou" types making up and leading the approving crowd throwing rotten tomatoes and kicking a witch being drawn toward the prepared stake, an "enemy of the people" being shot or sent to Gulag, a school teacher being sent to reeducation camp, a blacklisted for "unamerican activities" actor being denied a job, and yes, a young prodigy whose life being crushed and flushed down the drain for a Prometheus like action.

>Claiming Edward spearheaded a negative community response to a desperate cry for help of a dying man is ludicrous. And I think you should apologize for insinuating that

ok, i've just checked my English through Webster

spearhead:

2: a leading element, force, or influence in an undertaking or development

you don't think his opinion was a leading element and influence in that community response ? Ok. That just my opinion against yours. Lets look what other people are saying:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-asking-for-hel...

Surprise! they cite the same comment.

>as I am sure expressing these thoughts puts significant torment on Edward.

have you read the top voted comment on this page we right now at? Sounds like that of a tormented man?

tinco
>it is not about "later" and specific Aaron's mental state. >It is about very specific pattern of "holier than thou" >types making up and leading the approving crowd throwing >rotten tomatoes and kicking a witch being drawn toward the >prepared stake, an "enemy of the people" being shot or >sent to Gulag, a school teacher being sent to reeducation >camp, a blacklisted for "unamerican activities" actor >being denied a job, and yes, a young prodigy whose life >being crushed and flushed down the drain for a Prometheus >like action.

Have you even read what Edward said in that comment? No such things were insinuated. He just voices his opinion on the way Edward was raising money. It's not that radical to think Aaron's action were a bit reckless!

>Surprise! they cite the same comment. Yes.. that article was written after Aaron had already passed, and nowhere says anything about wether the comment leaded a community response. It is just an example of a community response. >Sounds like that of a tormented man? Everyone has his demons, I think if people stop blaming him for stuff he didn't do in threads that are completely unrelated, he would feel a bit better after making a nice contribution to our community like that top voted comment.

Oh and I still think you should apologize.

CodeMage
Just out of morbid curiosity, if you knew he was "well respected around here", what in the world were you hoping to accomplish by insulting him in your comment?
Legion
Just ignore him. I'm a little sad to see the comment get so many replies, instead of simply being downvoted into oblivion.

I'd love if we as a community could endeavor to give troll responses like that as little attention as possible.

sillysaurus
I was thinking mods should have the ability to kill individual threads of discussion in the comments.
[dead] trollShame
DONT FEED THE TROLLS OM NOM NOM
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
jackmaney
Remind me, how many points of karma does it take to unlock the ability to downvote?
peterhi
Pretty much the same here. Been coding since I left school in 1979. Comfortable but not really seen much money but its a great life.

However I have finally started to move into management. Meetings, be nice to clients, billing and invoicing. Bit of a pain but I can still code and finally get to try and NOT be the sort of manager I used to complain about :)

bjhoops1
I was really hoping "making more" would be followed with "love". Money's great too, though. :)
pestaa
After a certain age, "making more" can't be followed with "love". Or so I've heard.

If I am aware of the correct meaning, that is. (Not native.)

peterwwillis
Bob Dole might have a bone to pick with you.
mingmecca
40 here, still going strong. 18-22 times a month according to my wife's daily tracker.

Exercise, exercise, exercise.

bjhoops1
Wait, your wife has a sex tracking app? Of course if all couples are as prolific as my wife and I, I can only imagine what kind of scaling problems you'd run into tracking such vast oceans of data...
andyhmltn
The smoothest humble brag I've ever seen!
x3c
Worse than the scaling problems will be the count mismatch between your and your wife's app if data integrity breaks.
garethadams
Since this is Hacker News I think you can treat `$` as a placeholder variable for any word you want
efnx
My first thought was that I should evaluate everything to the right of it first!
terryjsmith
What changed when you were 25(ish) if I may ask?
edw519
I got a job. With real customers who needed real solutions. That opened my world.
zura
Any advice how to stay healthy and be productive at this age? Maybe some specific treatments to lower the chance of heart attack and stroke?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
pknerd
And how do you keep yourself energetic at this age? :) Impressive!
mathattack
I'm with you on the upwards trend. I would just toss in some non-linear jumps up as the family grows, and some setbacks as older family members become ill.
Enquiry
People aged 1-20: How did you find HN? HN isn't easily found on search engines (except for the exact keywords "hacker" and "news"). I can't imagine how a 15 year old is stumbling upon Hacker News, other than a mentor or parent referring them.
dkulchenko
I was 15 when I stumbled on HN (turning 18 today). Learned about it through YC and its startups (Heroku in particular).

Google "startups" and you tend to end up on a YC page pretty fast, and on HN soon after.

eksith
Happy Birthday!

I came across HN while searching for code examples for forums (strangely enough). This was when Digg was still relevant, but someone suggested looking to alternatives for link sharing and HN came up in the conversation.

I lurked around for a long time and then finally joined.

abritishguy
I'm 18 but I can't really answer that, I stumbled across it a while back and now it is my 6th most visited site. I think an article on a site was using hacker news for discussion rather than having a comments thread below it, although I can't remember if this was my first exposure or not.
alexvr
I stumbled upon Feross Aboukhadijeh, and I think he mentioned HN on Twitter or something. It was in a negative context, as in, "Stop constantly checking Hacker News and actually do stuff," and I now understand why. Glad I found it, though!
xtc
19 here. I began reading a few of pg's most popular essays when I was 17 then found out about Y Combinator and just dug around a little. Now I'm here.
nawitus
Hmm, it's linked to and talked about in a large number of technical blogs and social media. If a young person is interested in programming these days, he or she has probably heard about Hacker News.
josephpmay
I read an article about Y Combinator when I was around 10 years old and have been following it ever since. I started actively reading Hacker News at 15 or 16. (Made an account when I was 16).
ntumlin
There was a link to here on /r/programming. What really got me hooked wasn't all of the articles about startups, etc., but an interesting Wikipedia article. I forget what it was, but it was in the same vein as "White Coke" on the front page now. In the comments of posts like that it's evident that some people think they don't belong on HN, but to me they are reminders that there is really cool and interesting stuff out there that I have no idea even exists. At least getting rid of them would keep the kids out, or it would have me.
uiri
Well, it is fairly easy to stumble across Eric S Raymond's How To Be A Hacker if one has any interest in writing software (or just FOSS in general). At the end of that piece, he links to a couple of Paul Graham's essays, which in turn link to his other essays. HN is the topic of at least a couple of PG's essays so it would surprise me if sooner or later someone reading said essays didn't visit HN at least once.
devonbarrett
<20 here: I first found HN when I was about 15 through a link posted in an IRC channel I was in.
Everlag
<18 right now. I found HN through a blog that I started following for whatever reason. Terminally incoherent if you want to take a look. One day he mentioned HN on the blog and I found this and instantly was impressed with the mix of articles.

I like HN and check it regularly. It has a much higher standard than reddit and thus supports more interesting discussion. Yes, I do often read the bloody comments before reading the story. Sometimes only the comments because they can be more interesting than the story could possibly.

tommaxwell
17 here. I was introduced to startups when I was 14 or 15 through Diggnation. I guess that lead to finding HN.
dysoco
I'm 15. Probably discovered it because of /r/programming in Reddit, can't remember exactly.

I came for the technical discussion, not for the startup scene.

djent
I'm 17. I found HN last year when I searched "Hacker" in the iOS App Store, or some similar query. Found an app, which I no longer use, and started frequenting the site.
mvarner
Stumbled upon HN when I was around 14-15 (took me a while to work up the nerve to make an account)! Had been fairly familiar with ESR's Hacker Manifesto at that point (probably found that at around age 11?), and I think I was searching for something related to that? I've been reading it fairly consistently since. Was and still am a fan of the interesting random links, though I've been enjoying the technical ones a bit more in my "old" age.
cenhyperion
15 here. Working as a developer (along with several more experienced, more talented, and smarter developers who are teaching me more than I've ever learned in school). Been hacking for about a year and half. When all your coworkers browse hacker news you notice.
9nimo4
18. Found it through Twitter (if I remember correctly) about a year or year-and-half ago. It's hard not to end up on HN when one reads pretty much everything tech and startup.
andyhmltn
I started developing about age 12-13ish so by the time I was 16 I was pretty ingrained into the whole community and naturally HN fits into that demographic perfectly.
lewisflude
I've been working with startups since I was about 17 (20 now). At first I felt like a bit of a novelty, but now I feel like just a regular dude.
centrinoblue
I'm 44 and have been writing web apps since the late '90s. As a UI architect now my JavaScript / front-end skills are in very high demand and I am writing by far the best code I have ever written.

A couple of years ago I faced a cross road in my career to either go into mgmt (director of UX) or commit to development. I chose to remain on the technical path and haven't regretted it one bit. I haven't experienced any overt ageism but I do feel I need to keep my skills at the cutting edge to stay on top like a cagey vet.

Looking forward (and in the mirror) I realize the clock is ticking wrt promotions and salary so I'm working on a couple of side project/apps/start-up ideas with the idea that eventually I will be able to leave the mon-fri corporate world behind once and for all.

alexvr
At what age would you say you were smartest, if you have noticed any fluctuation? I hear you mental power peaks at about 22 and begins to decline after 26, but that's pretty depressing, and I don't want to believe it, so if you have experience to counter or confirm this, please share. If you have noticed any decline in "fluid intelligence," is it negligible? Does your wisdom and experience outweigh any mental decline in real-life situations? How does age affect creativity? Thank you, wise elders.
mindcrime
At what age would you say you were smartest

Right now (3 days shy of 40).

if you have noticed any fluctuation? I hear you mental power peaks at about 22 and begins to decline after 26, but that's pretty depressing, and I don't want to believe it, so if you have experience to counter or confirm this, please share.

I don't really buy it. Subjectively I don't feel anything that makes me feel less smart or less capable than when I was 22. And given the huge advantage in accumulated knowledge and experience I have now, I feel FAR more capable than my 22 year old self, or my 30 year old self, or even my 35 year old self.

Does your wisdom and experience outweigh any mental decline in real-life situations?

I would say "yes". If my cognitive abilities have declined at all, I think the increase in knowledge and experience far more than compensates for that.

How does age affect creativity?

I think I'm more creative right now than at any other stage of my life.

chubot
The good thing is that software isn't math or music. In those fields you might peak at 26.

Software is mathematical but it also requires a lot of judgement and experience. Consider that Guido van Rossum didn't even START working on Python (most popular language on HN) until age 35.

From what I can see 30's and 40's is a sweet spot for a lot of programmers. It seems like a lot of startup founders are young, but I think a lot of the guys actually making systems work have been around the block a few more times.

stephencanon
> In those fields you might peak at 26.

This is oft-repeated, but I’ve never seen any actual evidence to support it. I know plenty of mathematicians who didn’t start doing their best work until they were in their 40s, and musicians who have only gotten better well into their 60s.

chubot
Yeah I should have qualified that... it's not even math or music, but rather particular subfields and a particular kind of person. 26 is too young too; I was taking that random number from the OP.

Galenson claims there is a human dimorphism between people (or at least artists) who peak young and old (summarized here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius.html)

Math, music, and chess do have the most child prodigies. It doesn't mean the converse is true, that older people are worse at them :)

dominotw
I am thirty one and just started a BA in mathematics and I am usually the sharpest in the class filled with 20somethings .
anuragramdasan
I really don't want to believe that. While yes I am 22, and I feel the most mentally powerful till now but I don't see how it could decline as soon as it hits 26. Too early.

I have had the privilege to work with tech folks on the other side of 40 and their experience was very handy as I was short in just that one field. Just the sheer experience helps them make better decisions. Also the fact that they have had more time to learn certain things compared to us younger ones must count to some extent maybe, right?

VLM
You have multiple fundamental cultural conflicts that I think will effectively provide enough noise to cover up any signal.

The first one is intelligence metrics are only permitted WRT aging which makes them impossible to intelligently compare. Culturally verboten to discuss the same metrics WRT class, race, pretty much anything else. So there's numbers... and we have no idea what they mean, if anything, in the bigger picture. OK then.

I suspect there are no large collection of serious peer reviewed numbers to back it up. A vague cultural belief of "everyone knows" but no one's really measured or documented it with enough detail and repetition to prove much of anything. Or its a statistical anomaly.. men who make it to age 20 have always lived to 60s-80s. The reason average lifespan exploded in the last century or two is 4/5ths of the kids stopped dying. Therefore the avg specs over the centuries means little to anyone already an adult. Might very well be the same effect. So no data and no critical analysis.

Another cultural problem is pigeonholing. Teen screws up, well its just hormones. Slightly older, must be on recreational drugs. A little older, well, he's the new guy. Bit older, the baby is keeping them up all night can't blame him. Now he's worried about his teenagers. Same old screwup who still screws up at the same rate as when he was 5, finally reaches a well seasoned age with no excuses left, well, his screw ups must "NOW" be because he's old, LOL. Even if a graph of "screwup-full-ness" is a perfect flat line for his whole life.

Another interesting distortion is changing jobs. Generally our culture doesn't give kids big picture jobs and old people entry level jobs. Odd how their demanded performance seems to match the stereotypical expectations.

Final cultural barrier you have to power thru is the classic, teens energy and ignorance rebel against parents wisdom and experience. I donno if you're going to be able to power past that, its a heck of a roadblock to correct for. Much like a recreational sport, the "conflict" might solely exist for fun/cultural reasons. There may be no actual difference at all, but humans love to "other" each other and get all dramatic, and this sounds like a fun topic to fight about, so...

krapp
I hear you mental power peaks at about 22 and begins to decline after 26, but that's pretty depressing

That seems... odd, and doesn't reflect my experience. I'm doing the best and most creative work of my life right now, I wouldn't have even been capable of any of it at 22.

ibarrac
I'm 46. I do agree that I felt smartest around 22-25, I was able to recall stuff quickly and think faster than now and absorb new information faster, but that's just raw calculating ability and short term memory. I have noticed over the years a slow decline, and now I feel about 10% less smart in that sense.

However, over the years I have gained a large array of mental tools, techniques and knowledge that have vastly expanded my abilities. I am a more competent programmer now, as well as a more rounded person. We will see if that holds up for another 10 years.

alexvr
I did some research after asking this, and the studies' results seem to contradict each other. Apparently, our brains are largest at the age of 14, and we're smartest at about 15, especially in terms of new concept absorption. While that may be true, I once read that a fatty substance called myelin, which apparently facilitates rapid and efficient processing, is most ubiquitous in the brain in your early twenties, and a gradual decrease in this substance is probably responsible for mental decline. But a major longitudinal study on the topic found that mental abilities are largely constant from 20 to 60, and that through training, elderly brains can be significantly revitalized. I theorize that a major confounding factor is the tendency to retire around 60.
tehwalrus
it would be really cool to see some of the sources you found in your research... :)
alexvr
I learned a lot from the Seattle Longitudinal Study. This diagram basically sums up their findings: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474018/figure/F... Also, they mentioned that if you correct for the loss in perceptual speed that comes with age, the drop is not as significant. I interpret this as, "If we give elderly people as much time as they need to take an IQ test, their performance will be relatively close to that of 20-somethings taking the same test under the same conditions." (I may be wrong, but that's what I would like to think.) I also found a study by UVA that is looking for participants, in case anyone is interested: http://faculty.virginia.edu/cogage/
mindcrime
Ugh. I turn 40 in 3 days. Thanks for the reminder. :-(

All joking aside, it isn't so bad. EDW's chart above is pretty accurate in some ways. Certainly life doesn't end at 40(ish)...

In my case, the main issues are more joint pain, more random stiffness (after long car rides or something, for example) and other minor physical issues. Well, that and adult-onset (type 2) diabetes. But that's managed with oral medication, diet and exercise, and isn't exactly the end of the world (although I was pretty unhappy the day I was diagnosed).

mililani
I turn 40 in a few months. And time is going by faster as I get older.
sliverstorm
time is going by faster as I get older

I've noticed that too, and it terrifies me.

andyhmltn
I believe that's because you have more time behind you. If you're 5 years old a year is a fifth of your life. But if you're 50 it's a fiftieth so it seems a lot less.
YZF
This curve will probably have good correlation to the penetration of personal computers and the Internet when people are teenagers. The .com boom in the early 2000's (edit- ~'97-'00) brought a lot of new people into the industry and that's going to be reflected (those people are now in their early thirties) and the people in their 20's are those that got exposed to technology as a result of the .com boom.
Eduard
I'm two month older since the last age poll.
tambourine_man
Damn, 31 today. Can't click the most popular 26-30 option anymore.
jorgeleo
If the numbers are true (which I doubt), then the majority is on their 20s... well, that explains a few things.
cik
Wow, so I finally registered for HN, just to be able to comment on this one. And man, I'm feeling old at 33.

I've having been developing professionally since 18. I took a weird route, spending one year at uni (17), then working full time, and getting my degrees at night before it was fashionable to do so. In ~15 years, I've had the gamut - developer to multi-geo team manager, with ownership of 9 datacenters. I vastly prefer software.

I'll echo edw519 there - quality of life increases dramatically once you get out of your 20's. The longer you're in it and learning, the more value you have. You've seen more, been around, and pick up new things faster - because they look like combinations of things you've seen before. Curve balls no longer freak you out, they're exciting.

tl;dr Getting older is actually awesome.