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You will doubtless have more knowledge about the sort of thing that will work and that won't work.Andrew Fielden wrote:. . . . Do I know more than the younger devs? Probably not . . .
We tried this on the Nova 5.
Did it work?
No, but...
Campbell Ritchie wrote:You will doubtless have more knowledge about the sort of thing that will work and that won't work
Chris Crawford wrote:Here's another way of thinking about it: a young programmer plunges into coding immediately and gets the code written in an hour, then spends twenty hours debugging it. The old pro spends five hours thinking and planning, then writes the code in two hours, and it works perfectly the first time.
Monica Shiralkar wrote:However, when the old pro spends 5 hours thinking and planning and 2 hours coding whereas the new pro always look busy, the managers think that old pro has laid back attitude and is not doing that much hard work as rest of the team. This should ideally not happen but practically it happens often.
Chris Crawford wrote:You should be supervising young coders.
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Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:
But even in the office, thinking/planning look like work. Unless your manager counts keystrokes.
Chris Crawford wrote:
By the way, did you know that the 6502 opcode for loading a fixed byte into the accumulator is $A9? 😛
Some people, when well-known sources tell them that fire will burn them, don't put their hands in the fire.
Some people, being skeptical, will put their hands in the fire, get burned, and learn not to put their hands in the fire.
And some people, believing that they know better than well-known sources, will claim it's a lie, put their hands in the fire, and continue to scream it's a lie even as their hands burn down to charred stumps.
The rest of the team should be preparing their rota . . .Monica Shiralkar wrote:. . . , the managers think that old pro . . . is not doing that much hard work . . .
Monica Shiralkar wrote:
However, when the old pro spends 5 hours thinking and planning and 2 hours coding whereas the new pro always look busy, the managers think that old pro has laid back attitude and is not doing that much hard work as rest of the team. This should ideally not happen but practically it happens often.
Some people, when well-known sources tell them that fire will burn them, don't put their hands in the fire.
Some people, being skeptical, will put their hands in the fire, get burned, and learn not to put their hands in the fire.
And some people, believing that they know better than well-known sources, will claim it's a lie, put their hands in the fire, and continue to scream it's a lie even as their hands burn down to charred stumps.
Tim Holloway wrote:Ageism.
I first faced static about my age in 1989. Then again, that was the worst employer I've ever had, bar none.
I actually missed the CORBA fad, although ironically I worked on a CORBA project for someone several years after CORBA had died out. Poor guy.
The point that HR departments (well, one of many points,) miss is that while you might not have been taught the latest shiny technology in school - and actually, I don't recall specific technological platforms being class studies anyhow - what you have learned over time is often more valuable. Unlike the so-called "real world", computer people do learn from history, and while that doesn't mean that each new technology is inevitably closer to perfection (I present the warts in Java for example), it does mean that you have examples from the older stuff that you can leverage. Including having learned what actually works and what doesn't.
The trick, of course, is to recognize what's special about the new platform and not blindly try to force it to behave just like what you're used to. I knew someone who got frustrated trying to write Pascal like it was COBOL, Python has a different mindset than Java, and you wouldn't believe the number of people who check into the JavaServer Faces forum with "solutions" that attempt to program JSF like they're used to programming raw servlets - JSF is an Inversion of Control architecture and many people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that the framework automatically delivers stuff to you rather than making you write code to go out and get it. Or that JSF is based on POJOs and that very little well-written JSF code is actually JSF-specific.
Anyone who wants the good old days where you were the person who was responsible for the COBOL payroll program on the mainframe and that's all you did until the day you retired on a pension is out of luck. I figure I'm likely to end up sucking up a new technology no less often than every 24 months, if that. Fortunately I enjoy that sort of thing.
The real problem isn't in old dogs learning new tricks, it's that Hiring looks for cheaper people who won't object to being forced to work insane hours. And most people who aren't young anymore have had enough of that.
Tim Holloway wrote:
Monica Shiralkar wrote:
However, when the old pro spends 5 hours thinking and planning and 2 hours coding whereas the new pro always look busy, the managers think that old pro has laid back attitude and is not doing that much hard work as rest of the team. This should ideally not happen but practically it happens often.
One of the biggest flaws in the human brain is its tendency to equate motion with productivity.
Given the world a choice between paying Brazil to let the Amazon forest basin sit undisturbed and operating as a global biological cleansing mechanism versus not paying and having Brazil clear-cut it down to another Sahara, it's very, very hard to get people to pay to "do nothing". To say nothing of in a more realistic model, too many people in Brazil wouldn't sit for leaving a resource unexploited where there are jobs and business it could generate in the short term as opposed to many generations.
So it is with software. Just about all of us have solved some of our stickiest problems not when we were "at work", but rather in bed at 3AM or in the shower. Sitting staring out the window isn't "working" and - my own biggest pet peeve - hours in chair is not productivity. Software isn't like hamburger where the more hours in the day you grind, the more software you get. Useful software, anyway. And even a hamburger grinder run overspeed outputs cooked meat, not actual hamburger.
COVID has done us a favor in that regard. It has demonstrated concretely that fighting your way through traffic to park in a chair at a desk for 8 hours or more a day isn't more essential to the economy than work-from-home in many cases.
There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors
Andrew Fielden wrote:
Btw, does anyone actually write bare metal servlets any more?! The choice of web frameworks these is absolutely bewildering.
And I take the points about experience being worth something. However, the hotshot kids these days think they know it all.
Some people, when well-known sources tell them that fire will burn them, don't put their hands in the fire.
Some people, being skeptical, will put their hands in the fire, get burned, and learn not to put their hands in the fire.
And some people, believing that they know better than well-known sources, will claim it's a lie, put their hands in the fire, and continue to scream it's a lie even as their hands burn down to charred stumps.
Andrew Fielden wrote:You are the voice of reason Tim. I'd like to work with you. Any vacancies?
Some people, when well-known sources tell them that fire will burn them, don't put their hands in the fire.
Some people, being skeptical, will put their hands in the fire, get burned, and learn not to put their hands in the fire.
And some people, believing that they know better than well-known sources, will claim it's a lie, put their hands in the fire, and continue to scream it's a lie even as their hands burn down to charred stumps.
You need to remind your bosses that a tired programmer gets the company on the front page of the newspapers:-Andrew Fielden wrote:. . . . a life outside it, and a family I want to spend time with. . . .
or,Fatal accident blamed on computer error,
* * * * * * *1,234,567 card numbers and email addresses lost to hacker attack.
So did I when I was that age. And a bit more besides.. . . the hotshot kids these days think they know it all.
Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:
But even in the office, thinking/planning look like work.
M Winters wrote:our edge is less in the current issues of the world, and more in the observations through time.
When I had to estimate, I always tried to estimate pessimistically rather than realistically. If you say it will take a week and it actually takes five days, you will look better. Learning to suck through your teeth is a useful extra (ask any builder or car mechanic): “Pffffffffffffffffffffft! If nothing goes wrong, we might just manage that within the week.”Satyaprakash Joshii wrote:. . . They estimate more realistically rather than assuming that they would do 50 things in the week and ending up doing 20. . .
Campbell Ritchie wrote:When I had to estimate, I always tried to estimate pessimistically rather than realistically.
Out on HF and heard nobody, but didn't call CQ? Nobody heard you either. 73 de N7GH
You mean he halved it back to where you started?Paul Clapham wrote:. . . . My boss had a similar practice for dealing with my estimates. . . . .
Now, if that isn't a description of what programming should be like, I don't know what is!Les Morgan wrote:. . . the adventure begins anew again!
Les
Andrew Fielden wrote:I get hired at a senior level because of my years of experience and age.
Liutauras Vilda wrote:Their primary goal is business and what is best for them.
Some people, when well-known sources tell them that fire will burn them, don't put their hands in the fire.
Some people, being skeptical, will put their hands in the fire, get burned, and learn not to put their hands in the fire.
And some people, believing that they know better than well-known sources, will claim it's a lie, put their hands in the fire, and continue to scream it's a lie even as their hands burn down to charred stumps.
Campbell Ritchie wrote:
Now, if that isn't a description of what programming should be like, I don't know what is!Les Morgan wrote:. . . the adventure begins anew again!
Les
Out on HF and heard nobody, but didn't call CQ? Nobody heard you either. 73 de N7GH
Campbell Ritchie wrote:Yes, you have been blessed to have such a career
I remember you told us about tailoring your undergraduate course some time ago. Did you ever consider going for a higher degree?
Out on HF and heard nobody, but didn't call CQ? Nobody heard you either. 73 de N7GH
We had on chap called Richard who came back to work for a PhD; his topic was about entrepreneurial startups; he found that most people had given up their startups within five years and become somebody else's employeesLes Morgan wrote:. . . when I retire in a few more years, then I'll have time for the Masters, but now there are grandkids spread out across the Western US . . .
Now, that was a long time ago. Summer 2005 if I remember correctly.If I remember correctly--I ran into you back in the day over at Sun.com in their forums too. . . .
Consider Paul's rocket mass heater. |