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Comment by eeZah7Ux | Hacker News Reader

> The most senior developer (24yo or so)

I see the problem there.

I've seen older developers that call themselves senior, but lack basic knowledge. I've seen younger developers, wise well beyond their years. Age simply isn't a big factor in how you judge a developer.

Just because you saw a few exception does not mean the rule does not hold in general. Or are you saying most people don't learn with time (a corollary of your theory that age is not a big factor)?

> most people don't learn with time

I think this is correct. The curve flattens with age (in my opinion).

> you saw a few exception

I think the seniors you met (the knowledgeable ones) /were/ the exceptions. Most seniors I have seen have convinced themselves that they know all there is to know.

> Most seniors I have seen have convinced themselves that they know all there is to know.

Yeah, seems we've met different kinds of seniors... I don't know any senior who wouldn't understand that "the more you know, the more you understand just how much you still don't know".

That quote is very true!

I am getting on a bit and its not that I think I know all there is to know, but I see so much new tech that seems like pointless unnecessary complexity. I reckon that more than 90% of apps could be done in a classical MVP, with a bit of JQuery and a well tuned database. Most new ideas are a rehash of something from decades ago. It gets rather tiring.

I would say that I have seen no discernible pattern, so I have learnt that it is imprudent to judge a developer by their age. People do learn over time, but some people learn more "cogently" than others, i.e. some get more out of one year's worth of learning than others get in 10.

The best thing I've seen on the topic is: "Some people have 10 years experience, some people have 1 years experience 10 times".

That's misleading because it's too simplistic. A smart person could spend 10 years gaining real, legitimate experience and they could still be eclipsed by someone with little experience but much more talent.

Talent is no substitute for experience.

I'd say it's mostly the other way around, experience can't substitute for high natural cognitive ability. Of course a person still needs experience, but people with high cognitive ability don't need nearly as much, and people with less cognitive ability will hit thresholds of capability much more quickly. A lot of people live in a bubble of people with similar ability so they don't grasp the true importance of ability. And fakers who learn nothing year over year but have "years of experience", extremely common in this industry, don't like being told there are 14 year olds way more capable than them at their own jobs.

I mean talent is no substitute for experience in the sense that experience teach you things about how the world works which you cant figure out just by thinking, however smart you are. But sure, cognitive ability is a multiplier, and if you don't learn from experience it is wasted.

A have met people much smarter than me who wrote bad code because they were working from a theoretical framework which just didn't correspond to realty.

But your point is only valid if those who do learn with time are either rare (so do not make a dent in the general trend) or they somehow also do not learn much after a certain age, both of which I find deeply problematic.

Programmers by the nature of the profession must be good at learning over time... and I find it difficult to believe someone who is good at learning when at 20, will be bad at learning when at 40...

> some get more out of one year's worth of learning than others get in 10.

Sure, but they probably continue learning the year after?? And the year after??? Or they too, stop learning (or are just too rare)?

Most people don’t magically grow wiser with time. They need to be in an environment where they can grow, otherwise they’ll emerge just as stupid as before.

The counterpoint is you need time to grow wise, and there's no way to get wise without many years of experience.

That’s also true. I guess that the relative percentage of people you’d call wise increases with age.

If you start out with a cohort of individuals across the spectrum of ability, over time many of those of lesser ability will self-select out of the pool. It is my experience (oops, see what I did there) that people rarely spend a career doing what they're not very good at. The exceptions inevitably stand out.

So, combining the winnowing of the not-very-apt with the gaining of knowledge through experience, the end result is that you have a preponderance of wise old experienced contributors.

I you are one of the younger inexperienced ones who believe they know better it's likely you'll self-select at some point, secure in your Dunning-Kreuger knowledge, and move to some career in which your high level of competence is valued more.

Shameless age discrimination. Very smart people exist at all ages. I've seen 21yo junior grad developers outperform 45yo 'senior' developers.

It's even more complex as you cant even say dev X > dev Y for all tasks. So the age thing is even more silly. After so many years you start forgetting the stuff you did (in detail) in the first years anyway.

Seniority is not about how smart you are. And most programmers of any age are neither prodigies nor geniuses.

It's unlikely (but not impossible) that a 24 year old developer has had much of the experience needed to be classed as properly senior.

Do not accuse people without evidence! I'm all against age discrimination.

..and when you see a company where the age cluster around a very small area you can tell age discrimination is happening. Which might very well be the case of the parent post.

You're bringing up the exceptions that prove the rule as if they disprove it.

Age is a just a number. John Carmack created Doom in his early 20s.

Every good rule has an exception.

Why not judge people by the result of their work, instead of their age?

Because then it’s harder to deal with our own imposter syndromes if we can’t blame it on the youth and hold their heads in the toilet while giving them the professional-development equivalent of a wedgie.

This was discussed at length in last week’s “Grey Beard Weekly” newsletter.

So the "old people" are the bad guys for you, hmm.

Then again, it's mostly "old people" who are discriminated against when it comes to hiring.

It seems so, and the fact that people are accusing me of ageism as I pointed out that a company hires only people below 24 years of age is very telling...

You didn't point that out, you made a vague complaint about someones age, and the comment you replied to doesn't even give you a good basis to assume that, so it's no wonder nobody understood what you tried to hint at. Hint: in many companies, a project involves only a small part of the workforce.

So the "old people" are the bad guys for you, hmm.

Yea that was snark, bud. Doesn't always translate well over text, admittedly.

But no, not the "bad guys". That's an interesting conclusion you've arrived at.

Now that you have advertised the newsletter. Maybe share a link too.

There isn't a newsletter. It was tongue in cheek.

That's a weird take. You don't think Carmack 2020 is wiser than Carmack 1993?

He is currently working on artificial general intelligence.

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