BBC article about over 50's startups. Who here is older than 30? (news.bbc.co.uk)
Just curious. After reading this article, and being 38 myself, I thought it would be interesting to ask the Hacker News community who here is older than 30, but creating a startup?
48 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadWhich turns out to be a pretty good article. The phrase after this quote is pretty interesting too as a summary of what is desirable:
"Always striving and always working toward a new synthesis.."
Read the whole thing.
I see this all the time, it's a real disgrace for the human race. I have a hard time believing that it really has to be like this..but everyone I know over 50 assures me it is true.
There are obviously 'some' happy, older people out there, so I do feel that I have a little bit of evidence supporting my belief that old age doesn't necessarily mean a depressing life. Perhaps being a wage slave their entire life and then suddenly having all the free time they want does something to people. It is definitely worth researching, this entire debacle has an aura of bold statements about life without grounding in fact.
It's worth remembering that, while you may look at a 70-year-old and think "I could never live like that", that's largely because your mind is not seventy years old yet. The good -- and scarcely surprising -- news is that old people seem to be fairly happy doing the things old people do.
I wish I could provide you with a link to that lecture. Heck, I wish I could find it again myself -- maybe this summary would be less vague, then. But Stanford's "iTunes U" has got to be one of the worst-designed pieces of information technology I've ever seen: you can't Google the damned thing, and once you do find something I have no idea how to link to it. You can Google up plenty of flames: see here: http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/brian/archives/022052.php
The right age to start a business is somewhere between the age you are excited about the possibilities and think you can do something to make even the smallest ones become reality and the age at which you feel defeated by the world at large.
So long as you're in that range I see no problem with you succeeding, be you 18 or 58.
(OK, bad joke from a response in another thread)
You've just owned up to being old. Nobody codes in Java anymore.
Or in hex, 0x2A
You can do some really cool things when you're in your 20s. I know I did. Why stop? Look at the cost of market entry. Kicking off a new web app startup is equivalent to what? Taking a year off and buying a boat?
The trick is: can you be as hungry when you're 35 as when you're 25? I think you can -- but my opinion is biased.
Let's not forget one very important fact that I never see mentioned here...
When I was in college, and then in my 20's, there was NOTHING available like there is today. No microcomputers, no internet, no start-up mentality. (When I say "no", I mean for 99% of us.) When I graduated college, most people had nothing ($48 in the bank and a 6 year old car) and EVERYONE wanted a good job with benefits and a chance for a better life.
I did that and was fortunate to get into IT at the right time in my life.
Fast forward 30 years...
Imagine having written 30,000 programs, implemented 100 major apps, worked with hundreds of great people, and made tons of mistakes and STILL have the same chance at start-up success that everyone else here has. As long as you have an open mind, play nice with others, and take care of yourself, this is a great time for ALL hackers, regardless of age.
I may not run the 100 yard dash as fast as I did in 1978, but my code sure does. I'm having more fun than ever. Can't wait til I make my own, "What do you think of my app?" post.
Eric http://www.codedevl.com
Awesome. :) cheers!
I learned about computing on a TRS-80 and the Commodore 64; when I got to college it was VAX and Digital UNIX. I started with BASIC and C and I'm learning Python and Ruby.
Since then, I went back to school and eventually got an MSCS. Still working on picking up new skills in parallel with my current job (which is all Java/J2EE).
And I haven't ruled it out...
So, I'm finishing a CS degree this summer, and I'll be working on startups full-time while working as an ER nurse part time. It's not a bad way to boot strap, really.
http://ourdoings.com/
Access to computers was very hard to come by when I was in my teens, but a lot of folks were interested nonetheless. By my early 20s the first PCs were hitting the market. A 48K basic Apple II cost about $2000, equivalent to perhaps $6000-$8000 today. As poor as I was then, I bought an Apple II system in 1979 and have maintained a strong interest in computers and technology ever since. People in my generation (and slightly older) started the personal computer revolution, and much of the earlier work on the internet.
One advantage of age is a perspective at how far we've come. In the early 80s I was a systems programmer for a large IBM/370 shop, running IBM's VM Operating System... the original "Virtual Machine" environment. We supported 500-1000 active/logged-in users on mainframes that had 16MB of RAM and perhaps 8GB of total disk storage. It was pretty cool in its day. Today, a $400 laptop could whup that system (in most respects). Amazing really.
My colleagues and I have gone from programming in PL/I and Assembler to Basic => Modula2 => C +. C++ => Java => Python/Ruby => and lately, a growing interest in that old warhorse, Lisp.
I can't sprint as fast as I once did, and it's harder to engage in marathon all-nighters than it was in my 20s, but in most ways I'm smarter and more capable now than I was back then. So please excuse me (and others like me) if we continue to stay engaged...