Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?

2,634 pointsgenedangelo531 comments

In May of 1963, I started my first full-time job as a computer programmer for Mitchell Engineering Company, a supplier of steel buildings. At Mitchell, I developed programs in Fortran II on an IBM 1620 mostly to improve the efficiency of order processing and fulfillment. Since then, all my jobs for the past 57 years have involved computer programming. I am now a data scientist developing cloud-based big data fraud detection algorithms using machine learning and other advanced analytical technologies. Along the way, I earned a Master’s in Operations Research and a Master’s in Management Science, studied artificial intelligence for 3 years in a Ph.D. program for engineering, and just two years ago I received Graduate Certificates in Big Data Analytics from the schools of business and computer science at a local university (FAU). In addition, I currently hold the designation of Certified Analytics Professional (CAP). At 74, I still have no plans to retire or to stop programming.

View on HN

I am 80 years old and still working full time in IT. Although I evolved from pure programming to project management and business analysis the past few years. Originally started out working at Cape Canaveral as a radar and telemetry engineer and moved into programming after I left there. Whenever I interview, I completely ignore the age issue. If the interviewer is to dumb to recognize the value of my knowledge and experience, that is on them. Finally completed my PhD in Computer science when I was in my 60's.

How do you find your brain works and how productive you are compared to say 20 years ago? My father is in his late 70s and gets quite tired during his day - I wonder if you keep working it keeps the brain more active.

Also it must be weird going to a retirement party for someone who is 15 years younger than you :D

Not OP and not in their age group but I would say it comes down to either genetics, lifestyle choices or combination of both.

I made a bunch of lifestyle choices (lost weight, keto diet, being more active, less screen time at night, etc). As a result I've noticed a significant increase in energy levels and mental clarity.

Not to be rude but:

> Not OP and not in their age group

Then why are you answering?

Even if not in their age group, it is still applicable. Someone in their 80's that has eaten right and excercises and gotten good sleep for 80 years probably has significantly more energy than someone who did the wrong things.

He wanted to share similar experience with the caveats up front. Concept of free country, free world, free internet :)

I had similar reconnaissance but now I hesitate to share. But challenge accepted, worst case is downvotes :) 4 years back, maybe 5 I used to think this is how old age was (would not mention my age but it is younger than the main OP), body slowly unable to do what is used to be able to do. Then after 2 stents and change in lifestyle, I find I can do same or more than what I could do 5 years back, maybe a decade back. Will it continue like this for next decade, or the decade after that? Who knows? But there are many things within the that are in the range of probability and it is on us to push towards the higher end of the range. For those who start disciplined, it may not make much of a difference, but think of an average person ... I think programming at 70 should be feasible for most as long as they fixed their lifestyle by 50. [Most but not all because this is a game of odds]

> Then after 2 stents and change in lifestyle, I find I can do same or more than what I could do 5 years back, maybe a decade back.

What kind of change in lifestyle made such a positive difference for you?

It varies from person to person, but for me: cut down/eliminate sugar (my soda consumption is now 1-2/year whereas earlier it would be every day, multiple sometimes), cut down/eliminate lattes, eat only as per hunger, diet is more of a whole foods plant based but I take eggs regularly and meat once a week while shunning all packaged/frozen food. Still lot more veggies than carbs. And exercise, it is not an option, you do not need to binge on it but you can not lose a month just being a sloth. You need to move. I could always walk but after stents it took me a month to go from initial 0.8 miles attempt to 1.0 miles but keep working on it slowly and steadily never adding on a massive risk. Last year I did my first (and so far only) 10K which I could not have dreamed of a decade back, and touch wood, the recovery times after these are fantastic : not so when I did the first 5K.

The bad side effects: focus. There are times when you are in the zone and you want to finish some piece of work, and the watch tells you to get up because it is 50 minutes after the hour. 2 very conflicting needs: moving for health vs sit and focus. If I was not overthinking of health, I would rather focus and get the job done in one sitting.

That's great info, thanks. I probably need to internalise it, fast!

Lockdown has given me a couple of months of sitting in one place. I've really enjoyed the focus and productivity, and online conferences I couldn't have attended otherwise.

But my usual exercise is to walk around town extensively, and to pace a lot while thinking. Not much of that happening while confined to a small space.

Hmm in fact lockdown has increased my activity levels. Depends on where you live though. Started working from home and I set up a desk in garage because that seemed the best option and climate should be ok 9/12 months, I usually dress up like going to office by 9, so at max I need shoes but otherwise by lunch I am anyways wearing shoes, so easy to get in and out for a small stroll and there are hardly any people on our residential streets so little chance of running into someone within 6 feet or you step on to the street and let them pass. The main advantage is being able to go from workspace to walk in 15-30 seconds. Couch to walk is much more difficult.

Like in politics, there are different camps in terms of nutrition and DIY well being. You follow what works for you, but the best in terms of "pitch" I liked was Dean Ornish and he wants you to focus on a) diet, b) exercise, c) meditation, and d) social connections. All of that is needed, and all of that helps.

> Still lot more veggies than carbs.

Uh, vegies are mostly carbs?

Even the veggies with a very high carb content (potatoes, corn) are low (~15-20%). Bread has about 50%, maccaroni about 35%, while other veggies (broccoli, carrots) usually have less than 10% carbs.

Sorry I am not a doctor and at a superficial level I was thinking of veggies vs bad carbs. Would not go further because what I know, I know, but I am sure it can be challenged and people will do better to read on these.

Yes, and was a woman involved?*-))

I do not understand the asterisk reference, but nope.

The brain is like any other part of your body, if you let it atrophy it'll loose it's edge over time. This is not to say you can't sharpen that edge with practice. Gotta hit the "gym" to get your shape back :)

AAARRHHH! A friend has been telling me about her dad, he was full of life and when he came up to my cabin he was a whirlwind of activity.

But after they sold the house (he loved gardening) and moved into a condo where there is little to do she can see him going downhill month by month. Before he had a purpose in his life (gardening and house maintenance), now he just has the sit around or go on bike trips. It is a shame.

It sounds as though your friend urgently needs to investigate service opportunities for her dad. Sometimes when people discover how unexpectedly useful they are to others, it's like a psychological vitamin that was missing.

This.

Many retired people need help with what others consider everyday (monthly, yearly) tasks: changing filters, fixing a door, light bulbs, or minor electrical fixture/switch/appliance repair, stopping ants entering the building, a leak in the ceiling, etc. Fixing PC problems counts too.

Anyone who has owned and maintained a home is capable of doing these things provided they're in good health. I'm always happy to help my retired neighbors with their little problems, perhaps b/c I don't have enough of them and they are an interesting distraction, as well as making me feel helpful.

And helping people from abroad, new in the country, learn the language.

There're lots of older / retired? people at a library here where I live, two evenings a week, meeting younger people (say 15 to 35 years old) who recently moved to here, with learning the local language and school work.

There're younger volunteers too, helping out with the language, maths, chemistry etc — but I was surprised to see that many older & retired people, maybe 70% of the volunteers. (This was before the virus, now I think libs are closed.)

My aunt went to a great retirement community outside Boston. In her 80's she was Chair of the Computer club, and helped lots of newcomers find their feet. She also edited the newsletter etc. She wasn't alone in that community in being active. She lasted til 94 and was pretty healthy til last few months - and had no regrets and didn't particularly want to live on. Great example...

Bike trips are more exercise than gardening, though..

I wouldn't be so sure. I did a load of gardening over the weekend, and it involved heavy things. I'm sure I got more exercise to more muscles in my body than I would if I had gone on a bike ride.

I'm guessing you mean motorbike and the person you're replying too thought you meant bicycle...

I am guessing they didn't: gardening can be serious work. It also depends on the type of gardening, the size of the garden, available equipment, etc.

Just like you can do a 3km/2mi leisure bike ride, or bike ride for strength (eg sprinting uphill) or endurance you can do the same with gardening.

I am also guessing you've never covered any serious area with a garden hoe. :)

you're right, i haven't!

I regularly kayak long distances in rough conditions, backpack, jump rope, practice yoga, play hockey aggressively with people half my age, and engage in calisthenics, and have been for ~20 years. Currently in my mid-40s, I am never more sore than after a few hours of pulling weeds in my garden.

And if you any taller than average, your back and bottom will hurt from short tool handles and constant crouching down and back up!

Took an interesting course on aging and the brain. Everyone suffers some degree of cognitive decline but it can vary wildly based on a number of circumstances to an almost negligible extent for lucky people. A lot of it is out of your control but high performing people who keep engaging their mind can compensate better for decline.

It’s also why leaving your job or moving to a place with less activity can accelerate decline. Unfortunately, brains are also very sensitive to depression at an advanced age (less blood flow among other things), so grief/loneliness etc can quite literally cause deterioration. Another reason IMO to make sure seniors can work if they want to.

interesting, did they talk about the topics of nootropics and atherosclerosis in this class?

Yes to atherosclerosis, not too much about nootropics. It's a fantastic course, available from the Stanford school of continuing studies. It was a two full days weekend seminar taught by a neuropsychologist who works at the Stanford Hospital. I'm not an alumni and anyone can register for these course so I really, really recommend it!

I'm a young guy (31) but the class was so cool. People from ages 25 to 90 year old Stanford alum.

That's for sure. I just went to my granddaughter's 18th birthday party. She knew I was still working full time and she couldn't figure out how old I was so she asked me. When I told her I was born before the 2nd World War she wouldn't believe me. My daughter corrected her.

Actually, now this is hard to take - but when I was a kid in my home town, there were still a couple of civil war vets alive in the local hospital. How is that for something crazy.

My brain works fine. My body - not so much. I tire more easily than I did 20 years ago but so what. I get up at 4:30 AM every day and work at something until about 8 PM and then am in bed by 8:30.

The absolute worst thing you can do is retire. That is the beginning of the end. I will work until they plant me.

> I get up at 4:30 AM every day and work at something until about 8 PM and then am in bed by 8:30

I do me too (since I was about 30). Not exactly 04:30 though — sometimes I get up at 02:00, sometimes 06:00 ... working 4 - 10 hours, then siesta for about 1 hour.

I find that with a 30 min or 1.5 hours? power-nap/siesta, my brain "resets" and I can stay concentrated 10 - 12 hours a day.

Edit: Now I see that you're in bed 8:30 PM. I first read 8 AM and assumed that that meant a power nap. — Seems I get tired a lot sooner than you.

How did you go about getting your phd? Did you take a break from paid work to go to school? Did you work on your thesis nights/ weekends?

Do you feel like you learned from your advisors, some if whom I'd imagine were younger than you?

Did you study an area related to your work at the time? Or did you use it to learn a new area?

I am also interested in any responses to these questions. Even if not from the OP.

+1 I'm deeply interested. Been thinking a lot about doing a Masters in AI/ML but I'd rather not stop working. Been considering part time masters programs but finding them is tricky.

I did my Master’s part-time at DePaul University with almost all of the program online while I was working. They have an AI track but I am not sure how good it is.

Do you think it was worth it? Did you like the program?

Have you considered https://omscs.gatech.edu/?

Disclosure: I am taking my 6th course of 10 as a current student in that program

You should definitely consider it, I am a graduate from the same program :)

What do you like and dislike about the program? It’s been on my wish list for several years now, but I’m hesitant to commit.

It's 7k for the whole program. That alone makes it worth it.

I'm also a student in OMSCS, on my fifth class of ten.

Likes:

- It's very affordable. My company's education reimbursement is able to cover the whole program.

- The courses are rigorous and I don't feel like I'm retreading very much from my undergrad.

- I'm going to end up with a degree from a top program that is exactly the same as is granted to students who attended on campus.

Dislikes:

- The course selection is a bit limited. Some of the classes that I want the most are only available on campus.

- Slack and Reddit are active, but I feel like I'm missing the social aspect of being a student.

- Some people are skeptical of the online format, which is frustrating sometimes.

I did enjoy the program and for me it was 100% worth it. I had a non-CS undergrad degree and by taking classes I was able to get my first developer job and the things I learned in the program allowed me to end up getting a more advanced position at a company than the position they had open. They had a UI position but ended up getting a backend position working on their trading platform due to some of the work I had done in the graduate program. One downside for me, though, was my math background was lacking (took discrete math, business calculus, a relatively light stats class and econometrics in undergrad) so I wasn't able to do a lot of the more interesting looking classes. Also, I was excited about the multiple compiler classes that were on the course catalog but none were offered in the 5 years I was in the program.

It is hard for me to say if the program would be worth it for somebody with an undergrad degree in CS. The cost of the program is incredibly high and I walked away from the program with ~$80k in loans (could have been a bit less but had to take more in the beginning to be able to support my wife as well). I'm also not sure how rigorous the program is compared to others.

I did a part-time PhD there. Took ten years but I had a very supportive advisor and managed to finish it working a day a week on it. You get out of it what you put in. They have good teachers but if you do it remotely it's on you to do a lot of self directed learning, for the PhD anyways. I now work as a researcher for a large e-commerce company. As part of the program we take Masters courses in ML and AI and they were good, I learned a lot.

How did you find your advisor? Are/were you in the Chicago area while doing your PhD? Did the fact you were doing it part-time require you to pay a tuition?

GA Tech OMSCS is tailor made for you...

I'd be very curious too. My son's university is proposing to do the next year (mostly) remote, which sounds like a perfect way for me to go back for a couple of classes too. I always wanted more letters after my name.

> I always wanted more letters after my name.

This is a really bad reason to do a degree, if you want my unsolicited opinion.

If you're going to become a post hole digger, it can only help you if you don't take things too seriously. :)

That depends a lot on where you live. In Austria, for example, where I lived for several years, academic titles carry a strong social cachet and are used absolutely everywhere - on your credit card, bills from the city council for cleaning out your bins etc. People with more than one PhD will be addressed as Dr Dr Firstname Surname, someone with a regular engineering degree is allowed to refer to themselves as Ing. Surname instead of Herr/Frau. It's a really big deal.

> Dr Dr Firstname

Never seen that one before!

Who knew that Thompson Twins song was really about a highly educated Austrian.

And Robert Palmer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQdaSpEeBvQ

You get a "Dr." for each PhD.

Walter H. Schottky's grave in Pretzfeld says "Prof. Dr. Dr. e.h. Dr. e.c. Dr. e.h. Walter Schottky"

My mother did a maths degree in her 50s, remotely, over several years. She grew up in a time and place where she didn't have the opportunity to get that eduction. She just wanted it for the sake of it, I suppose to prove to herself that she could. But mainly to "get the qualification", not do anything with it. It was a perfectly fine reason to do a degree. Plus I think the person you're responding to was being at least a little tongue-in-cheek anyway so no big deal either way.

I'm almost positive that was tongue-in-cheek.

> Do you feel like you learned from your advisors, some if whom I'd imagine were younger than you?

Why do you think it'd be unusual to learn from someone younger than yourself?

Really good point!

I think as an internet generation we are the first ones to experience decreasing importance of the age.

I am sure he also had plenty to teach them! Experience hones your problem solving and troubleshooting skills.

I would also be fascinated to learn this. Liked the idea for several years of gaining a PhD, but I just couldn't imagine taking three or more years out of my career at this point. The only vaguely-related anecdata I have is from my mother, in a completely different field, who was a nursery school teacher (kindergarten to our friends across the pond) with a strong emphasis on creative development, but only after retirement at 65 did she actually go to university and get herself a fine arts degree. Now she potters away in her little studio every day and will probably not be in any danger of losing her marbles.

I took two years off to complete my PhD when one contract ended and could not immediately find another. I thought at the time if not now, I'll never find the time. Actually my primary advisor and sponsor was a professor at the University and head of the department. We kept in contact over the years and he kept bugging me to get my act together and finish what I started.

Someone below mentioned remote. When I first started there was no such thing as remote learning. These days even the most prestigious universities offer BSc programs where you never have to set foot on campus and can do it all over the internet. The nearest I came to that was when the University finally offered somewhat remote courses but it involved ordering books and course materials and taking exams where you had to get a proctor to monitor your exam taking. I did a course or two that way and used my local church pastor as the exam proctor. That method was really difficult. Completing a single course was a major accomplishment.

Actually taking Internat based courses now takes a lot of self discipline. Far too easy to slack off and do something else.

How’s the cost compared to a brick-and-mortar place?

From what I have seen, the cost of Internet-based courses is generally pretty high. Seems like you would be paying a high per credit cost minus the on-campus costs like room and board. There are going to be exceptions but that seems to be about the norm. There are a few places where State Universities give free tuition to in-state residents.

I remember paying about $12 a credit a long time ago and that was difficult. These days, I don't know how normal people can afford to go to school. You get yourself deep in debt for student loans you can never pay off. I don't know how that can be workable.

The Open University (remote) was founded in 1969, so it isn't exactly new.

Why are you not yet retired? I can think of few strong reasons, but I would love to hear from you. (I started programming at 8, I’m 41 and I have no plans of stopping )

It’s like in Shawshank. First you can’t stand the bars, then you get used to them, then you can’t live without them.

After 50+ years of structured work people forget how to be in charge of themselves.

The word is "institutionalized" as Morgan Freeman put it in the movie.

Or, more optimistically, if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. I love programming too and have no plans on stopping either.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Programming is the thing you love the most and if it was 100% up to you what to do with your time you’d still do it?

I mean I don’t hate my job but damn I’d just sit in front of the TV and go for walks if that was an option.

I spend most of my free time programming for fun. It is not unheard of.

I'm 78. I do the same. I select problems from Codeforces or Codewars and work on those. I did enter contests for awhile but needed more experience to successfully compete.

I learned python a few years ago and have experience with several other languages as well. Python is perfect for someone like myself. To me it is a thing of beauty.

I read a lot - history and biography mainly. Favorites: The Fatal Shore and Empire of the Autumn Moon. Travel 2-3 times a year. Been to Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America as well as all over North America. Favorite place? Singapore.

Walk 2 miles+ a day.

Am a top backgammon player on ZooEscape.

Been married 51 years today and been blessed with 3 great kids.

Not rich but comfortable. Always been a saver or what my sister calls a cheapskate.

Am definitely slowing down. Am more cranky. And think the world is going crazy. Other than that life is better than I expected it would be at this age.

Personally I love programming, among other things that people might regard as similar to programming.

The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying.

Solving technical problems is vastly more satisfying than that.

It's like maths to a mathematician, physics to a physicist. Why would they ever stop, given freedom to carry on?

I would love to be able to retire for the freedom, but with that freedom I would want to build technology, much as I do now except I'd choose the things (and they would be much better things!)

(It might be that the kind of programming you do in your job is a very different thing though. I'm not excited by writing more business forms either. Programming is an extremely broad term these days.)

> The prospect of just sitting in front of TV and going for walks is horrifying. For short breaks, sure, that's really nice. For years? Horrifying.

Can you acknowledge that solving technical problems for decades is just as horrifying to me? And that watching TV and doing nothing is extremely satisfying to me?

I don't think that acknowledgement is necessary. Nobody's distrusting you; it's just… people are different. What applies to you doesn't necessarily apply to other people. If someone's still working years after they got the option to retire, chances are they enjoy it.

I have no problem understanding your preferences and I don't question your choices, except for one: why would you spend time on news.ycombinator? I assume you find it ... fun?

I build up the karma of my accounts and then sell them.

I seem to recall you saying this before, and I assumed it was a joke, since someone who was doing that probably wouldn't say they were doing it, and it would devalue the sold account to leave a comment like that up.

But now users are asking me if this is ok. Obviously it's extremely far from ok, if true, so I need to ask: is it true?

I want to start by acknowledging that's a totally legitimate perspective.

I'm curious though - do you think you'd be fine with only doing walks and TV for 40+ hours a week? Personally I got interested in computers and programming very early, and at first it was 100% a leisure activity. It stayed at roughly that level of exciting for me until probably 6 months to a year into being employed as a developer, but it's no longer the #1 thing I like to do when I'm not at work. My current situation is work with a side of typical relaxation (watch tv, browse the internet, etc.), but I expect when I eventually retire I'll start spending a bunch of leisure time on programming and general messing-with-computers stuff again.

I know I’d be fine with it.

I took 3 years off from working (lived frugally off savings) and that is basically all I did. Purposely avoided anything that would be considered “productive work.” I mean I read some books and rode my bicycle, too. But my time was pretty much just watching TV/movies and laying around.

Best time of my life by far.

I cringe when I tell someone about it and they are like, “oh but didn’t that get boring?”

This sounds like absolute hell to me

I had ultimate and total freedom to do exactly what I wanted. If that’s not heaven I don’t know what is.

Fwiw, I agree with you.

Freedom to choose is what it's about.

I'm really glad you got to enjoy those 3 years.

"I had ultimate and total freedom to do exactly what I wanted"

That does sound like heaven. Watching TV all day does not.

Are you saving up to do it again? I want to do something similar but I find it hard to justify the cost. I also feel like my family would constantly hassle me about it, which seems like it would offset any sort of relaxation or enjoyment I might get from the experience.

Unfortunately I now have a chronic disease that makes constant health insurance a necessity.

Do you mean family like parents/relatives harping from a distance? If so, they’re just jealous and aren’t worth listening to. As long as you’re smart about your money and make a plan to get a job before you’re tapped out, go for it.

> Can you acknowledge that solving technical problems for decades is just as horrifying to me? And that watching TV and doing nothing is extremely satisfying to me?

Of course, I'm completely happy to acknowledge that!

I know some programmers who were pretty hot, but one day they had enough and never wanted to go back into it. Good for them, hopefully they found something else they enjoyed.

What I was addressing before was:

You seemed to express skepticism that someone else finds programming something they would actually prefer to do, over retiring from the field, unless they are institutionalised or imprisoned, like some kind of sick creature.

So I added myself to the data, along with mathematicians, physicists etc. to support an argument some may relate to, to say it's not that unusual for people to actually love programming or other intellectual activities like that.

I should have included artists and writers. The motivation is a lot like it is for them: It feels innate, like an instinct, it just makes you miserable if you don't pursue it.

I assure you, if you could see the messy diversity in my life, you would not think of me as institutionalised, or particularly structured :-)

Yep, the lockdown means I am at home all the time, so I started pulling out hardware to make things, programming the programs that always I was working on in the back of my head and finish writing the fan-fics I have going.

The idea that you only do things because it is your job suggests a limited life, I remember when I was working telling the others about all the trips and cruises I did on my time off. When I asked they what they did on vacation they always went to the same places year after year. I guess that is what they wanted.

Why is it wrong for me (or anyone) to get fulfillment out of their job? Thanks to my partner I do the traveling thing; I visit other countries, sample other cultures, and routinely try new things. I'm not averse to any of it, but I don't understand the appeal, much less (what I read as) the condescending attitude against people who don't do it. Why can't we just "live and let live", without judgement, even if others choose to live differently than ourselves?

Without a doubt I'd continue programming even if I wasn't working. It's a craft. And like any other craft there are those who enjoy it as a creative outlet.

Yes, absolutely! Obviously there's other things I enjoy doing as well, but programming by far has the greatest impact on the world around me, and I love seeing the things I help create making other people's lives easier.

>I’d just sit in front of the TV and go for walks if that was an option.

Thats fun for the first week. The second week its depressing but you still do it. On the third week you will be picking up hobby projects and working on them just for fun.

Continuing programming != continuing being an employee, working for others.

Some types of work are only feasible to do when working for others.

For example, of you love rocket science and working on rockets, you're probably better off working for NASA or SpaceX.

What's wrong with working for others? Similarly, what's the point of programming (or of any work, I suppose) if it isn't helping someone?

> What's wrong with working for others?

Nothing really.

I guess what the parent was getting at was that if you are an employee at a point of your life when society expects you to be retired, then you will not be able to allocate your free time as you see fit. In other words, working for others past retirement means you never really retire enough to indulge in things you never had time for in your prime, like spending quality time with one’s spouse for instance [0].

[0] Google’s former highly-paid CFO decides to retire after working for nearly 30 years consecutively https://mashable.com/2015/03/10/googles-cfo-retires-memo/

Not all jobs are the same or similarly enjoyable. E.g. instead of working on CRUD apps for the rest of the life, one might prefer working on a Rust interpreter in Haskell or a Gameboy emulator in Prolog - would be hard to find such 9-to-5 jobs - and after all, one might not want 9-to-5 schedule at all.

In other words - one might want freedom, basically.

As for not helping someone - programming can be recreational, just for the sake of enjoyment.

Depends on personality too, I guess.

I finish projects when they're for work. Or at least, I stay focused.

My own hobby projects are more fulfilling to me, but I often put them aside for long periods - sometimes years - because I don't need to finish them to get pleasure out of doing them, and it's much harder to stay motivated to finish the often very boring parts when I don't have to.

But it feels good to finish things up too. I can push myself to do that for side projects, but the time and energy it takes to get me motivated to do that when I don't have the external pressure to motivate me is much harder.

If I "retire" I'll probably have to do a startup again to have some of that pressure...

I'm sure he would be retired if he wanted to

Weird take. I've been programming for 40 some years. I don't do it full time, trading time for $ anymore, but I still do it to write tools for my business pretty much every day. Cuz it's fun.

Not retired because I don't want to live on social security alone. That would be a bummer.

What about retirement savings? If you had funded your 401(k) and IRAs with an engineer's salary for this many years you should have many millions to live off of.

> What about retirement savings? If you had funded your 401(k) and IRAs with an engineer's salary for this many years you should have many millions to live off of.

Retiring to millions may be true in theory for certain programmers, but certainly not true for all programmers.

Reality is often different for everyone. As the African proverb says: “all fingers are not equal” meaning the outcome of a specific situation can differ across people. For instance, what if s/he had a financially draining medical emergency, forcing them to rejoin the workforce?

Many people suffer various setbacks in life ... take medical bankruptcy for example. You never know how it will turn out.

>If you had funded your 401(k) and IRAs with an engineer's salary for this many years you should have many millions to live off of.

And then what? Believe it or not, some people consider programming a blessing and fun. If it keeps you engaged, why not continue to get paid for it?

Yes. imagine if you retired you could turn to programming full time just for fun!

Thats my goal. All of the programming I enjoy doing has no clear way to monetize.

I'd love to spend months reverse engineering proprietary electronics and writing open source code / datasheets for them.

End of the day, passion & some objective in life - is more valuable than few dollars we earn. This is more useful in old age than ever.

Not quite as old, and but started at tech around the same age. At its core, I still love doing it, even though employers start seriously frowning on hand-on work when you're in your 50s/60s.

Not everything is great: the procession of silly methodologies, the endless train of obviously doomed technologies, and the recent obsession with social justice appearances. But the core of tech is still ripping good fun.

I'm also getting on (started programming as a kid early 80's on Atari 600) and agree with what you said - it really resonated with me and what I've seen over the years.

Sometimes too, I see comments from people frustrated with having to "work so hard". I'm sorry they have that burden, but for me, programming is not a negative in my life -- even though often times I do it many hours more than is actually asked of me. Sure it's got it's boring/frustrating times, alternatively it can be very difficult, rigorous, and taxing, but I doubt I'll ever completely put it down.

At what age did you begin your first full-time programming job?

Good for you! At 14 I was hooked, and knew that this - programming, IT, technology - was for me. I can see myself in your shoes some day. The "outside world" just doesn't get the allure sometimes ;).

As a twenty-something, I'd love to work along side an "old timer". Many of the abstractions and technologies change in our field, but just as many foundational concepts stay constant. I'm sure I would learn so much.

Best of luck to you.

Evolved?

Is it true that everyone in the media during your childhood spoke in a nasally accent?

I'm 43 now and working like 23 years in IT in various roles. Started a few companies and did that all on a high school diploma. One of my dreams is when I retire to finally go to university and get a proper degree.This more for emotional sentiment.

My grandfather was a (fighter)pilot and later he worked senior management at a bank. His biggest regret was not going to uni himself(poor parents and the army paid for it), later that my mum didn't go uni (she became a teacher) and after that even his grandson didn't get a degree.

Hopefully I can follow it online and I can speed up the lectures to 1,75x :d

> One of my dreams is when I retire to finally go to university and get a proper degree.This more for emotional sentiment

I'm around same age and experience, though I'm actually getting a degree now. My advice is - don't. It's an unbelievable waste of money and time. My initial goal was to leverage the degree into a better job but my plans changed and now I'll just be left with a useless piece of paper. In any case, getting a degree once you retire would be even worse. Work on some real world project that you enjoy, rather than settling for doing menial tasks, doled out by people who may know less about the subject than you do, while being rewarded with virtual points/grades.

I finished an associates degree at 38 from a community college, one of the credits I used was 20 years old. I would agree some of the classes were box checking and pointless.

The degree itself isn't useful but it did make me take a few classes I wouldn't have otherwise. I took physics 101 in person and absolutely loved it, I took art history online and didn't expect to like it but it turned out interesting.

Assuming you can go somewhere where the credits don't expire I suggest taking one class a time when you have time available. Read the rate my professor reviews and look for the good teachers. Most of the time online is fine but don't be afraid to take a class in person, lots of older students at night classes.

As someone that will work well past retirement age, what lessons or wisdom could you impart on us youngins'?

>I am 80 years old and still working full time in IT.

Serious question. Why? I love coding; I'll probably code as long as I live, but I can't imagine tying myself down to a full time job beyond the point where I need the money.

Some people just enjoy their job. I know several engineers who retired, only to return after a hiatus because they missed working with a team on something they were good at and passionate about. Work isn't always about money.

Right, I can understand why someone might wish to work part time even if they didn't really need the money, but I don't see myself working full time beyond the point where I am fully financially independent from needing to.

"I've forgotten more than you'll ever learn, but I still remember most of it" seems like an appropriate response if the question is ever raised.

Kudos to you for not losing your passion for the job!

I just found this thread and it's so great. You are an inspiration dear sir/madam. Do you still exercise?

Welcome to HN and for making this place more magical by your presence. Have seen other very senior programmers here over the years. Paul Lutus comes to mind now[1].

One question: Do you go through a mid life crisis in programming in your 40s/50s?

My story (just felt like sharing): I am in my 40s and have been programming for 30 years (I first wrote in Fortran in my Engineering College, 1st semester). Later professionally coded in C++ for around 10 years (and still keep coming back to it, as needed). Java for 10 years. Golang for 7 years. And Python for last 2-3 years. And there were other languages like Visual basic (late 90s). A lot of Unix shell scripting. I still think, I am at my best. But do have occasional self doubts. The main difference from younger days, which is perceptible to me, is the need for eye glasses, and needing slightly bigger fonts on occasions (HN is perfect that way).

I teach/guide my elder son, in programming, who just turned 20, and doing well as a programmer - did half of K&R C chapters and decent in algorithmic programming. Spent few months at Codeforces website and reached specialist level (Next level is Expert, which is generally considered respectable by any standard). And he also likely lurks on HN. :)

So now, when I see your message, it only makes me happy, that HN has likely at least 3 generation of programmers if not more.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp

Edit: typo

> Paul Lutus comes to mind now

I used GraFORTH and TransFORTH so much...

I'm in my 50's now, started my career during college, writing educational software for Apple II clones (not in FORTH, sadly). Now mostly Python, since the early 2000's, with little bits of other languages here and there.

I find HN delightful for the diversity we see here.

Just keep up the good work, glasses or no glasses

@aws_ls I wanted to surface this answer to a question about burnout answered by genedangelo. I is on page 2 here but I think it is relevant to what you are asking.

> genedangelo 1 day ago

> The one thing that comes to mind is to avoid the "hammer looking for a nail" syndrome. I see this all the time, especially in academia. Rather than worry about learning all the latest stuff, concentrate on solving the problem at hand in the simplest and most effective manner. If that requires you to learn new things, then that's a great time to expand your repertoire - working on a specific problem. Of course you have to strike a balance, but mainly concentrate on solving problems rather than being up-to-date on all the latest stuff and trying to find the proverbial nail for your new hammer.

Additionally, I am in a coder in my 50s and I have to say I am not going through any kind of mid life crisis in programming!

Like genedangelo, I just focus on problems that need to get solved and I really don't care how I solved it as long as I use a great tool that is meant for that job.

Super happy to learn a new tech if it makes sense for the problem.

There was a phase a few years ago where folks were using node.js to build all kinds of websites, including content heavy text based sites that would be better served as static html or dynmaic Ruby, PHP etc.

I think that's the classic mistake of a hammer looking for a nail and I can imagine it was really unsatisfying to build those kinds of sites with that kind of tech and might even contribute to burnout (just speculating).

Thanks a lot @jv22222 for sharing your own perspective apart from highlighting @genedangelo 's reply.

Just to clarify, I am also not going through a crisis as such, thankfully. Just a doubt on future continued ability lingers on occasions.

What you say, makes sense to me. After a few decades, we just see some patterns repeating with different names - RPC -> CORBA -> RMI -> Web servcies (based on SOAP) -> REST (based on JSON) -> Google RPC (going again to binary style) ... and so on. Not being cynical. Things progress in a way, but also have echos of the past.

Being 63, I don't get to say this very often: I am one of the youngest people in this conversation.

Delighted to read these stories about even-older-than-me old-timers. Even though I am a relative spring chicken, I'll list my old-timey computing experiences:

- Started programming on programmable Wang and Monroe calculators.

- PDP-8m in high school. 12k 12-bit words for four terminals running Basic. By special arrangement, I could take over the whole thing and use FORTRAN.

- IBM-370 in college, and I spent lots of hours on an IBM 029 keypunch. (That's where I developed my love of loud, clicky keyboards.)

- First job with Datasaab (yes, a computer division of Saab), and I programmed in their weird DIL-16 language.

- PDP-11 in grad school.

- Various VAXen in my early working life. Picked up Emacs in 1985 and now it's in my fingertips.

- A buddy and I wrote a book intended to support people who needed to work with a large variety of computing environments, (a real problem my buddy encountered). It was instantly obsolete, as it was published as minis were dying and PCs were becoming dominant. (https://www.amazon.ae/Computer-Professionals-Quick-Reference...)

- Many years in startups, mostly in Unix/Linux environments.

Retired now, but still enjoying programming. Having a blast with my current project: https://github.com/geophile/marcel.

> Picked up Emacs in 1985 and now it's in my fingertips.

I don't think this means the dreaded 'emacs pinky'...

man, I didn't know emacs pinky was a thing until now.

My left pinky is like Arnold Schwarzenegger's bicep, thanks to emacs.

Knuth was being paid by Burroughs to implement an Algol-58 compiler in 1960. He’s still programming, and seems to have advice for others on the subject. But I don’t expect to see him here.

Congratulations on being in that company, and may it long continue.

Partly cribbed from my comment downthread: I think I'd classify Knuth as the slightly different "longest working computer scientist". He's known for his quote "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

Or perhaps I'd classify him as the somewhat more sycophantic "longest working genius" or "longest working cool guy". Heck, Knuth was uniquely awarded a master's degree for his bachelor's because his work was considered so outstanding, he's an organist and composer, and he's hilarious. I love this quote about him: "If you had an optimization function that was in some way a combination of warmth and depth, Don would be it."

A quote from him in an interview I found: "Indeed, as mentioned above, my life's work was to be a teacher."

That's the way he likes to paint himself. From a lecture he gave at my university I remember that he said something along the lines of, that he usually came up with the idea and others wrote the code. From the experience out of the same lecture, however, I can tell you first hand that he knows his way around code and that he can code. The lecture was indeed more of a hands on workshop with Knuth spending most of the time in Emacs coding MMIXAL assembly - pretty low level stuff actually.

Just because he can code doesn't mean he does on a daily basis for a day job, which is what this ask hn post is about no?

Arguably, TAoCP has been his day job since the 60's, and it's full of code.

Knuth still does code basically on a daily basis. At least that's what he said in some interview (writing two complete programs per week on average, small and large, and that definitely qualifies him as software engineer among other things) and I have no reason to doubt it.

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html

Oh I have absolutely no doubt that Knuth can code better than I (or most people in this thread) ever hope to.

But being a programmer and a computer scientist -are- two very different things. Simply in his daily activities over the last sixty years, Knuth has been writing tens of thousands of pages, doing a lot of math, diving deep into computer science topics. (That is not what I do in my employment as a programmer.) This guy has been sitting behind a keyboard and writing code. (That is what I do.)

To be honest, it's a bit weird to judge a man on the basis of a joke he made over 40 years ago.

Now, I certainly wouldn't judge someone based on an out of comment snippet from nearly a half century ago, but Knuth has been portraying himself in a less-programmery, more CS-and-teacher-y way for forever, including interviews from last year. And I think he's being honest - that is who he is.

Anil Nerode is almost surely the oldest working computer scientist today - https://math.cornell.edu/anil-nerode - He technically is in the math department at Cornell but he has been there since well before Cornell had a computer science department.

I just read his CV. He got his PhD under Gödel. He was at Princeton when Einstein was still there. Amazing!

Margaret Hamilton started her first job in 1959 and is still working: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_en...

Depending how and whether you count academia, Donald Knuth may have a slightly longer career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

Feels like a decent chance you're third, then. Certainly you're one of the longest-working programmers. Best of luck. :)

Margaret Hamilton is an inspiration, but is she actually still working at age 83? I can't find anything that would indicate she is. For something like the "longest-working programmer" I'd expect them to have been actually "work"-working during that time.

And I think I'd classify Knuth as the slightly different "longest working computer scientist". He's known for his quote "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

She's the CEO of Hamilton Technologies: http://www.htius.com/

OP asked longest-serving programmer. That doesn't involve people who switched to management or some other position like CEO.

It would be fun to have her coming to tell if she's still brainstorming or coding.

You don't know that. I have served as CEO and still coded every day.

As did I. Common at smaller companies with tech CEOs.

But that wasn't your primary role or you would identify as programmer not a CEO.

Having said that no matter what role it's good to code everyday.

It was my primary role. I coded for many hours every day as CEO. It did make for a lot of long days. I can identify as both CEO and programmer. And musician and other things. No need for gatekeeping.

The CEO is the chief executive responsible for execution. Is programming not a form of execution? Why would the two be mutually exclusive?

Once a coder, always a coder.

“The Universal Systems Language (USL) is based on a preventive, development-before-the-fact philosophy that does not allow errors in, in the first place.”

Funny that there’s an error in that sentence.

Which is? The 2 "in"'s seem correct to me.

Oh really? Seems wrong to me.

The Wikipedia page I linked to lists a 2018 IEEE paper; her company's website still has her name on it.

Don't forget Ivan Sutherland and Niklaus Wirth. Fred Brooks joined IBM in 1956 and he's still active in research as well; Cynthia Solomon, there's quite a few

Trygve Reenskaug is still working on programming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trygve_Reenskaug

Respect! I've only been programming since approx 1979. I still remember the first time that I saw internet technology used in 1982 - transferring a file from the US to the Uni of Leeds in the UK. I also have no plans to stop although I have retired from full-time employment. Now just a hobbyist, who programs every few days, at my own pace and on my own projects.

Here's my own thought. My last place of work did a lot of research into teaching and simulation tech, and was heavily pushing AR / VR solutions from a disruptor perspective. Some of the theoreticians were heavily into their generation X/Y/Z perspectives and made a lot the advantages that young people would have as 'digital natives'.

As someone who'd been using computers since before they were born, I was quietly amused as being characterised as someone who couldn't properly understand tech because I didn't program until I was age 17/18. It could be argued that many modern digital natives are really the locked-in inhabitants of digital cities and walled gardens. I now characterise myself as a sort of 'digital settler' who in retrospect could be viewed as a pioneer on the digital frontier (although this is not how I perceived it in the early 80s when I was learning Pascal and then C on DEC, Amdhal and Vaxen).

I think my message for people who want to stay involved with the tech is to decouple their enjoyment of it from their career aspirations. Of course, YMMV!

> It could be argued that many modern digital natives are really the locked-in inhabitants of digital cities and walled gardens.

So true. I am lucky that almost all my programming is for personal enjoyment/growth and have gotten a huge amount of pleasure from breaking out of the infinity of abstractions that make up modern operating systems and getting into electronics and microcontrollers (which can now be purchased for pennies). There’s something great about truly understanding a system (also true about larger scale and even non technical systems, but I have particularly felt the change you describe from pioneer/settler to controller citizens on modern computers).

> I think my message for people who want to stay involved with the tech is to decouple their enjoyment of it from their career aspirations.

Thank you for your words! I hope to retire soon from headless chicken corporate job and to bring back a joy of programming art.

What do you think about all of the advances that happened in your time, especially with what machine learning is capable of these days (fully artificial human faces, for one)?

Any advice (technical or life) for us younger people?

I second this request. Would love to hear any insight you have with all your life experiences in the field.

Please don't say implementing JavaScript on punchcards.

No. Coding JS on keyboard is already bad enough.

It's a bit sad that people today still "fanboy" against a lang, like a lot of people still do for PHP (which has absolutely improved from the absurdity it was). JS followed the same path, ES2016 is an absolute dream to code on.

Maybe I'm biased? PHP paid my bills for a long time and currently I'm a front-end developer that works mostly with Angular (but sometimes I jump into the .NET Core backends). I love JS and TS, they evolved nicely along the years.

Nothing against being a fanboy for one specific lang, but thinking "X" language is bad/joke/nightmare isn't nice and makes people that work with them look like losers, which they aren't.

PHP and Javascript both improved significantly, but both still have horrible legacy baggage that can't be rid of, namely weak typing (not dynamic, where a variable can hold any type, but weak, where "1"+2=3). For me, that makes programming in either language like running in a minefield. And still, I write Javascript daily, because myeusers don't care about weak typing :-)

If you really care so much, why not simply embrace TypeScript?

TypeScript is awesome compared to JavaScript and even to other popular C-like languages. But it inherits all of the problems of the JS ecosystem without providing all of the benefits.

To make a JS package consumable by a reasonably strict TS project, someone has to basically rewrite the package. It's less effort than writing one from scratch, but it's not free.

> To make a JS package consumable by a reasonably strict TS project...

I’m not sure what you mean by “strict” here... Certainly one can use JavaScript from TypeScript, and even provide type information for the JS with declaration files. [1] Does a “strict” project require something beyond this?

[1] “Declaration Files”, TypeScript Handbook https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/declaration-fil...

Type information is easy to half-ass: list all the exports, mark them as 'string', 'Object', 'Function', done.

Adding the actually correct and reliable types is the hard part. (But easier than writing the code in the first place.)

The typescript compiler can be a bit slow at times as well which dramatically lowers the developer experience when using typescript

Perhaps one day I will. When I last started a big JS project it wasn't mature enough to build a company around. This does seem to be changing.

Strong/weak and dynamic/static. JS is dynamic, but variables will always have a type, which is memory safe - which makes types strong.

I thought weak/strong typing is more about how explicit/implicit type conversion is. In PHP and JS it's almost always implicit and they don't warn you for mixing most types, whereas e.g. Python will complain. That's one thing I don't enjoy with PHP/JS. A lot of certainty goes out of the window with it.

Everyone likes different things.

'1'+1=2 prevents a lot of errors. The languages tries to help you along compared to an harsh error. Maybe you want a harsh error.. halting everything until you declare a new variable with the same type and have to go through a manual conversion. For me let the language handle that. If you are tdding anything unexpected will be caught anyhow if you are worried how things convert.

It's like rust in terms of memory management vs c. It handles it for you..

Implicit string to number conversion is more like C in terms of memory management, in the sense that it's a huge footgun that you will definitely shoot yourself with. I have never seen it prevent errors, only make them worse by hiding them from QA so they can reach production and ruin your weekend.

It's unfortunately in JS that + is used for both string concatenation and number addition. There are however defined rules that anything concatenated with a string becomes a string. And anything used with -/* > < becomes a number. As a beginner in JS I always used -- instead of plus when doing addition. But as I got more experienced I learned what was strings and what was numbers. And if I'm not sure I add an assertion - so that there will be an early error. I also parse all input (user input etc) not even a static strong type system will help you there, you always have to check/parse the input at runtime! JavaScript is strongly typed as in whatever the user inputs it will be converted to a type. JS don't have that many types and usually it becomes a string.

I’ve heard another definition of strong, which is that the compiler will make more guarantees, and in those cases the terminology was:

    * safe/unsafe
    * strong/weak
    * static/dynamic

Note that while safe/unsafe is basically all-or-nothing, strong/weak and static/dynamic are more of a spectrum, so JavaScript would be safe, weaker, and more dynamic than other languages. Typescript makes JS stronger when authoring code.

Also sound/unsound

Javascript is a lot saner than that. The result is "12". (I'm ok with automatic casting so long as it's an embedding. Every number has a reasonable string representation, but not vice versa. Wanting explicit casts like in Python is defensible, though.)

Huh, what do you know.

Still, this is unforgivable in my book:

  [] + {} == "[object Object]"
  {} + [] == 0

For the first, I frequently (for my own projects) change the Array prototype to have

   Array.prototype.toString = function () {
      return '[' + this.join(', ') + ']';
   };

It would be convenient if Object.prototype.toString by default threw an exception, since the default breaks the embedding rule I described.

The second example is misleading, and it has nothing to do with the rules for addition: the {} at the beginning of the expression is parsed as a code block, played off the rules for what the value of a Javascript statement is. More realistically, we have

   ({}) + [] == "[object Object]"

but the original is, effectively,

   {
   }
   console.log(+[]);

I didn't realise about the second one. Thanks!

Thanks, I never realized that the second one was parsed as a code block rather than an object!

Would you agree that a language X can be objectively superior to language Y?

I worked with PHP professionally for some 10 years, with very competent colleagues from whom I've learned a lot. The PHP ecosystem with Composer and Symfony components is quite good. Still, PHP itself is a terrible language. I have less knowledge but a similar opinion of JavaScript. Doesn't mean people working with PHP or JavaScript are losers - I admire their tenacity and do feel a little bad for them.

The point is that a language can evolve so much they are not even the same language. I prefer ES2016 to Python for example.

Eh, the weak typing intrinsic in JS still makes Python win out between those two.

Python turns you into someone who cares how many invisible characters and of which type for each line you code. Weaking typing vs strong typing is the least of your concern

You (should) do that in other languages too. I'm not a fan of the way Python does it, but 1. it's not like you decide tabs vs spaces anew on each line, and 2. this is simply not a practical issue, unlike weak vs strong typing.

That really is use case dependent for me. In the context where I have made a thoughtful choice to use a dynamically typed language, I find strong typing seems to make things unnecessary clunky with not much gain, especially in webdev dealing with a lot of JSON and UI display. And if I’m in a situation where JS/dynamic language is not a good choice then I prefer a real statically typed language, not a middle-ground.

In what situations do you find weak typing useful? I've only ever had it introduce bugs and not make my life any easier. Meanwhile dynamic typing makes it a lot quicker to prototype things (vars that can be null or an int, for instance).

Numpy wouldn't work in JS because you can't overload operators afaik. Numpy/scipy are reasons why many people love Python.

It would work. All those overridden operators are just functions. It wouldn't be as concise or as intuitive though.

Yes, that was the point ;) Both languages are practically Turing complete so they are equivalent if you're just interested in what you can build with them.

Ah ok, by "numpy wouldn't work in JS" you meant something like it wouldn't be popular or as loved. Makes more sense now.

Terrible compared to what? What do you find a better language? What makes a language terrible for you?

Is COBOL terrible or C Or Go?

Good questions, not sure I can answer satisfactorily :)

> Terrible compared to what?

Terrible compared to other available programming languages.

> What do you find a better language?

Lisps, Haskell, Erlang, Rust, but even eg Python, Ruby, C, Java.

> What makes a language terrible for you?

Allowing me to do unreasonable things and resulting in unreasonable behaviour. Eg JavaScript:

[] + {} == [object Object]

{} + [] == 0

> Is COBOL terrible or C Or Go?

Programming languages are products of their time and context.

When COBOL was created, it might've been the best there was. By now, I think COBOL can be considered worse than many alternatives. If someone decided to write a non-toy greenfield project in COBOL today, I'd be surprised and might question their sanity.

C has two things going for it: it's a simple language and it's close to the hardware. I wouldn't call it terrible.

Go, now I really dislike Go, but I think there might be situations where it's the right tool for the job. Simple web services perhaps?

PHP was terrible already when it was created. I don't hold that against Rasmus, he just wanted to get simple things done, and didn't even intend to create a full-fledged programming language.

JavaScript... Brendan Eich wanted to put Scheme scripting in the browser, but because Java was popular, he was told by management to make it look more like Java and also to call it JavaScript. Oh also he had like a two week deadline or something.

Yea, I dunno... good hard questions :)

“PHP paid my bills” is the same argument as “NHS saved my life” in the UK

You're biased, they suck. Doesn't make you a loser for working with them, we all do it. But it's just pulling the wool to think that their obvious utility somehow counter-acts their (also obvious) lousy design. My personal advice is don't identify with your tools. Mark of a mature craftsman is knowing the nature of your tools and getting the job done anyway.

I don't really post anti-Javascript commentary, but I have an intense hatred for it because I disliked it and I had to use it for 10 years because it was the only client side language for the web. It is a bit irrational at this point, but I'm not a fan of imperative languages these days, and combining that with past experience makes me really not like it.

I don't particularly care about php because I have basically zero experience with it.

I think someday we will be able to duplicate the basic brain of an infant in a computer. Don't forget all the information is in our DNA and there's not that much innate knowledge - most of the infant's brain relates to the amazing capacity to learn. Someone will then take one home and train it like a human baby. It will become so close to a human that it will spark debates about whether it has self-awareness and whether it should have human rights. I regret I won't be around to see it, but who knows - maybe I'll be back :-)

Reading a speculative prediction, given been watching progress from up close for 57 years, is interesting.

Any meaningful milestones along the way, that you think are worth noting. Tasks or roles that indicate progress?

> Don't forget all the information is in our DNA

I'm not so sure about that (but I'm pretty green on bioinformatics). I mean, for one: https://xkcd.com/1605/. For two, if that was the case we wouldn't need projects like folding@home and such to tell us what the structures described by DNA actually look like. And for three, there is a massive amount of influence on brain development from elsewhere (both from within the fetal body and from the womb). It's a bit like having a compiler's source code but nothing to bootstrap it with...

Respect! That's truly inspirational. At barely half the experience with 30 years I keep wondering about what next. I still do plenty of programming in C (which, along with Z80 and 8086 assembly, is what I started with), Python and JS with some dabbling in Go. I find the problem solving part as invigorating and exhilarating as ever. What I do struggle with is the 100x additional lines of code which will be needed to make that initial code usable by others. That is needed and all that, but is stuff I would have done dozens of times in the past in different contexts and sometimes approaches drudgery. I wonder if you have any advice on how to keep the interest from flagging in a project past that initial days/weeks of deep absorption. Thanks again for sharing this.

> I wonder if you have any advice on how to keep the interest from flagging in a project past that initial days/weeks of deep absorption.

I, too, have been programming for 32 years. I have thought about your question many times. My current solution is to 'play more'. Allow yourself to play, even when you are in the 100x additional part. Playing makes your passion flare up again. By play I mean to start interesting side projects, ideas, try something new.

Maybe aim to see things in a different perspective. You making that code usable by others means others will benefit from your work.

So 1) you benefit from the work by having fun 2) others benefit from your work by using it to solve their problems or building things they find fun

Usability is also a problem worth solving. It's just a different problem.

Wow! I appreciate all the interest and feedback - quite unexpected. I'm glad I found HN. I'll try to add more responses tomorrow.

As a rather young person in the field, I'd love to hear your thoughts on any question you feel the motivation to answer. Your learned wisdom is appreciated by all of us young bucks!

(I'm a moderator here. Welcome to HN!) Because you're likely to get a flood of comments and questions overnight, I've switched an alpha feature on for your account that will highlight new comments that have appeared since you last viewed the page. They'll show up with a colored bar to the left of the comment. The feature doesn't work perfectly yet, but hopefully it'll help you keep track of what's been posted since you last looked. Note that the colored bars will disappear each time you refresh the page.

Good luck and thanks for a great post!

(Anyone else who'd like this alpha feature turned on for their account is welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll be happy to.)

Is there a feature request subsite for HN? I’ve seen this implemented really well on other sites[1] in ways that don’t detract from the main site focus or functionality.

[1] https://nolt.io

No affiliation, I just use a site which uses this to provide functionality suggestions. I don’t see why this kind of functionality can’t be bootstrapped from existing HN code.

how about a checkbox in the profile for people willing to test new features? i bet you'll find a number of volunteers.

i am definetly interested in this one. i often search for timestamps to find newer comments. color markers would make that a lot easier.

Have you considered implementing accessibility for this feature before it goes live for all? Screen reader users cannot see colored bars, and need a different indication of the fact a comment is new. I can give suggestions if needed.

Yes. If you'd be willing to email hn@ycombinator.com this would help me keep track.

I haven't been able to find the colored bar, maybe because of refreshes, but let me suggest you use something that is searchable. That way you could use CTRL-F and then jump from one to the next. Right now, I'm searching for " min" (note the space) to find the most recent posts, and "1 hour", "2 hour" etc. to find older ones.

That's on the list to add.

Congrats, you made it top 1 on HN! When we live in a world where experience is treated as baggage it is remarkable to find people in places like here to still appreciate it. I hope you will be able to enjoy your career until you decide yourself to retire! I think a lot of younger folks here, who are old by modern standards - I just turned 40 this year - are thirsty for some wisdom and lots of questions will be asked. And please don’t be offended if someone attacks you for some oppinion, this is the world we live in nowadays, someone’d find a fault in almost anything or anyone.

A bit of commentary on age discrimination in IT.

Of course, it exists. If you are over 40 and go on an interview where the interviewer is a 20 something kid you know what I mean.

My approach to age discrimination can be summed up this way.

Screw them. I have more experience and knowledge in the field than 99% of the people working in it, especially the managers. And I project that in an interview. I don't give a crap what they think of my age and I make sure they know that. I have what they need and they would be better off recognizing that.

Does that attitude work every time? Of course not. But I will be dammed if I will be submissive and put up with age discrimination. To hell with them. If they don't give me a job, some with better sense will.

The key is NEVER GIVE UP.

Thank you, this is a wonderful post! Please share more of your story. (Write a book, please).

I would love to hear answers to the following:

1. What ideas proved useful throughout your career, and what ideas did you change your mind about?

2. What are your hobbies? Do you still program in your spare time - if so, what? Or do you find other outlets?

3. What went into the decision to go back to school? Did you get the PhD? If not, did you get burned out, or what lured you away?

4. What were the Big Ideas in software over your career that didn't work out? Any that were better than expected?

5. General successes/regrets/advice for these readers!

Not the OP but I got my first programming job as a junior in high school in 1980 so I've been at it for 40 years. If that's good enough, here are my answers:

> What ideas proved useful throughout your career

Learning Lisp. I got an enormous amount of leverage out of that, and still do (I'm more or less retired, but I have a nice little Lisp consulting gig at the moment).

> what ideas did you change your mind about?

Before Lisp I thought BASIC was pretty cool (old-school BASIC, with line numbers). I was pretty down on Python when I first encountered it but now I'm a fan.

> What are your hobbies?

I like to hike, bike, ski, travel, fly airplanes, free dive and ride flowriders. I also write a blog.

> Do you still program in your spare time - if so, what?

Yes, but not very much. The last big project I did was writing the firmware for this product:

https://sc4.us/hsm

and the e-commerce system I use to sell it. That was quite a while ago.

> Did you get the PhD?

Yes, because I thought I wanted to be a college professor. Turns out that's not what I wanted, but I'm still glad I did it. But it's not for everyone. It really depends on what you want out of life. Do it because you love research. Don't do it as a means to some other end. It takes way too many of the best years of your life to do it for anything other than its own sake.

> What were the Big Ideas in software over your career that didn't work out? Any that were better than expected?

I've seen a zillion software fads come and go. UML. XML. ISO whatever the fuck it was back in 2000 or so. The vast majority of popular things in the software world are bullshit. The world keeps re-inventing s-expressions with different syntax. Very little has turned out better than expected, though Rust and webassembly look pretty cool. If I were going to do another deep dive into something today it would probably be one of those two things.

> General successes/regrets/advice for these readers!

The world today is awash with computational wealth beyond the wildest dreams of my youth. Take advantage of it. Get a Raspberry pi and noodle around with it. Bring up a web server, an email server, a DNS server. If you're really feeling ambitious, write your own, or write a game. Build a Linux kernel from source. Design your own programming language and write a compiler for it, even if it's just a minor riff on something that already exists. None of these things are particularly hard [1], and the things you will learn and the empowerment you will feel by doing them are priceless.

[1] The hard part of programming is not getting things to work, the hard part is getting things to work well enough for someone else to want to use use.

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/developer-aging/

That's a lot of questions, but let me take a couple. I got my Master's degrees in the early 1970's, when we used something called a "slide rule". In 1990 I went back to school to update my skills and expand my knowledge into artificial intelligence, which I had become enamored with. Unfortunately, I didn't finish my PhD (big mistake!) because in 1995 I jumped on an opportunity to join a company that had this amazing software that enabled very advanced analytics on big data (except it wasn't called "big data" back then). The software was called HOPS (for Heuristic Optimized Processing System) and I still use it today to develop custom machine learning applications among other things. I went back to school again in 2016 to fill in some gaps so would qualify as a real "data scientist" - the latest craze. I will say that HOPS was and is the biggest idea in software that hasn't worked out - at least not commercially. It's a system that is great for data scientists working on big data and enables them to do their own programming with minimal effort. I'm still hoping HOPS will take it's deserved place in the world of software development. It will be a great loss if it doesn't! It's one reason I'm holding on - to prove the exceptional things that it enables and prevent it from being tossed into the trash bin of history.

Looked up “HOPS (for Heuristic Optimized Processing System)” but didn’t find any good direct hits. Can you point me to some good starting points?

Why do you regret not finishing your PhD? I’ve gotten mixed reviews on if the effort was worth it for those I know who did it.

Is HOPS something that could be discussed publicly on HN? are there sources and examples that people could look at? If so, we could arrange some sort of thread about it.

This?

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20081114005550/en/TRA...

This looks like hops.com moved to hops-international.com which is now gone.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130613015951/http://hops.com/

Not looking to compete for the crown, but I have been involved with software development on and off since 1970. I started college in 1969, and really loved my liberal arts and social science courses, but began having panic attacks in class (I found out many years later that I was bipolar). My hail Mary move was switching majors to 'Business Data Processing'. My thought being that programming would give me a salable skill the quickest. We were doing JCL and COBOL programming on the school mainframe using punch cards. The panic attacks continued, and I dropped out of school in 1971. In 1975, I enlisted in the US Air Force, and spent six years working in Signal Intelligence. I have been part of the defense contractor corps (aka Beltway Bandits) since 1981, and doing database development/admin continuously from 1988 to this day. I'm 69 now.

Thanks for sharing ... how did you manage the panic attacks in the end?

Thanks for asking!

The nature of the illness varies somewhat over time. The panic attacks only seemed to happen when I was in a room with a large group of people. So quitting school largely removed me from those situations.

I was diagnosed as Bipolar 2 in 1997 by a psychiatrist in Manhattan, where I was living with my girlfriend. I started having true bipolar symptoms in USAF Basic Training but made it through (talk about rough), then years later working as a developer, I got to a point where I could just not deal with people. One of the signature characteristics of bipolar (and other similar disorders) is some form of paranoia. People at work would make some mild critical comment and my head would be spinning for days full of anger and fear and pondering what I should have said. The NY psychiatrist asked me just a few questions: 'When was your first clinical depressive episode' (19), and 'are you second-guessing yourself a lot' (Yes. A manifestation of paranoia as noted above).

How did I ultimately deal with the disorder? Wonder drugs! Zyprexa since 1997, Wellbutrin for many years, and lamotrigine, a mood stabilizer. Being bipolar is not something that I notice much anymore.

One thing I would mention for anyone who is listening and suspects they are bipolar: Bipolar people are vulnerable to trauma and PTSD. What helped me was another miracle (IMO), EMDR. A single one hour EMDR session with a trained therapist can rid you of trauma that would take a year or more of talk therapy to accomplish.

Hope that was not too long-winded.

EMDR = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_a...

Thanks for that particular datapoint, and for the info.

thank you! checking out EMDR now ... I think I will ask my therapist about it.

Very impressive experience.

My grandpa is ~75, started programming professionally in his early 20s, and currently works as an engineer for the University of Utah, so my hunch is that there’s more people with 50+ years of software engineering experience than you might at first suspect.

Either that or I just doxxed myself ;)

details.

what technologies is your grandpa using?

what's his opinion on javascript?

any epic kids these days stories?

I don’t know many details, but he’s been using Java for 10 years or so, and he’s not particularly interested in the new hotness. 10ish years ago I asked him how to learn to code and I know he in turn asked his brother, who’s a tad younger and I think is a CS professor somewhere in the Midwest. He ended up giving me Learn to Program Ruby by Chris Pine.

Edit: One more thing is that he’s the most intellectually well-rounded person I’ve ever met, a characteristic which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was common in programmers with more than a couple dozen years of experience.

Oh yeah, I started at 12, now I'm 62, still working happily, I think the trick is to reinvent yourself every decade or so, find something completely different to do, it's a big field

I too am 62 and have been a working programmer for almost 39 years. I did run two small startups early in my career, but was always a full time programmer alongside the others. Today I am a lead iOS programmer working with a team of 4 (until recently 7) team members, I still write code everyday and my team has a great rep for doing things faster than anyone expects, and still with the highest quality results. I've switched gears a lot over my career, from Fortran to Assembly to Pascal to C to C++ to Objective-C to Java back to C/C++ back to Objective-C and now the latest Swift. Done almost every kind of programming including embedded systems, desktop apps, web apps, mobile apps, dev tools and even worked at Apple helping other programmers back in the sad days. Funny how things I learned early on still guide me today, even though the tech has changed radically so many times.

> Either that or I just doxxed myself ;)

I wager, everything will be retroactively doxxed in about 20 years or so...

You have my respect sir (I assume, but women have been a significant force in programming since the days of Yore).

I have been writing software since 1983, and Apple software since 1986. I started as an EE (actually, technician, but became an EE in '84).

I was a manager for a large part of my career, which relegated my programming to open-source projects (one of which has become a rather significant force, in its own right).

I also worked for a Japanese corporation for almost 27 years. The Japanese have a sort of "reverse-ageism" in their culture. Older folks are often treated with a great deal of respect, and their judgment is considered valuable. Many promotions have age (must be "at least"...) as a factor. There's lots of issues with Japanese business culture, but it was the environment where I learned a lot of my cultural cues.

So, it has been rather...interesting to encounter the current...um...level of respect...for experienced engineers in today's American tech industry.

TBH, it was shocking. I knew that it was a factor, but I had no idea that it was so prevalent. I was absolutely gobsmacked.

When I first encountered it, I just wanted to throw in the towel and run, but I don't work that way. Instead, I doubled-down, and it has been quite gratifying. I guess old dudes can code, after all...

Again, you have my respect.

This guy is inspiring: https://www.businessinsider.sg/oldest-nobel-prize-winner-art...

Periodically there are questions here about dealing with burnout and learning to cope with technological change/churn. Someone who's been doing it enthusiastically for over half a century sounds like exactly the kind of person who could offer advice on that. Do you have any?

The one thing that comes to mind is to avoid the "hammer looking for a nail" syndrome. I see this all the time, especially in academia. Rather than worry about learning all the latest stuff, concentrate on solving the problem at hand in the simplest and most effective manner. If that requires you to learn new things, then that's a great time to expand your repertoire - working on a specific problem. Of course you have to strike a balance, but mainly concentrate on solving problems rather than being up-to-date on all the latest stuff and trying to find the proverbial nail for your new hammer.

That’s one of the best software engineering advices I’ve ever heard. You should write a book. Seriously.

Grace Hopper apparently retired from the navy when she was _80_. And then went into consulting. So you’ve a few years to go yet.

I hope to make 80 - not sure my health will hold up. I did see the article on Grace Hopper on Wikipedia. She began her computing career in 1944 and she died in 1992, so that's a maximum of only 48 years. On that measure, I have her beat by 9 years already.

Be a bit more optimistic! Cent'anni!

According to Wikipedia, Grace Hopper started her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark 1, which would have put her at ~38 when she began. Assuming she worked until her death, that puts her career in computing at a (incredibly impressive) 47 years.

She was a mathematician before that, though; probably about as close as you could get at the time :)

But yeah, always vaguely thought she was younger starting.

Younger nothing, it's wild that I never stopped to consider that there was a (recent!) period where our whole professional field had to be invented out of thin air, scooping up willing academics as it went. Considering that ENIAC (along with the Von Neumann architecture) wasn't even a thing until 1945, to begin her career in 1944 is hardly late! :)

(Aside, I wonder if recruiters in 1944 were already asking for ten years of ENIAC experience?)

> our whole professional field had to be invented out of thin air

"We shall need a great number of mathematicians of ability; there will probably be a good deal of work of this kind to be done" - Alan Turing, 1945.

You might find this talk by Bob Martin interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc - it's a history of programming that isn't the usual style, but instead about this growth into existance, increasing numbers of programmers, where they came from, and the effects that's had on the industry and on programming languages.

How much of that time was she a working programmer?

As an example, Larry Page may have been a programmer in the very early days of Google, but it's been more than 15 years since Larry has seriously written code for a living.

As opposed to Jeff Dean who is still hacking away at his keyboard.

Here's a short must-see video of Grace Hopper explaining a nanosecond:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eyFDBPk4Yw

I think you probably are, if you go by date you started working to the date you stopped! Even Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie seem to have started their first programming jobs a few years after you.

Welcome to HN! I hope you stick around, it can be a great place.

given the numerous posts about age discrimination on hn, i'm delighted to hear your story and wish you many more years of happy programming. as a whipper-snapper 40-something developer, it gives me hope and motivation.

while not as old as OP, I personally know several programmers in their 50s and 60s and all said they had no problem finding work.

I think if you're a top-tier developer (which OP seems to be!) age discrimination may not be as much of a factor? If you're decent but not amazing (most of us honestly) you may find it easier to find work at 35 than at 55.

you're right, not all of us can be super star devs (i certainly am not) but we can apply their techniques, mainly stay healthy and never stop learning.

I'm 52 and am just starting to look around. Given that I primarily want world-wide remote (I live in Japan), it may be a tad difficult. However, I had no trouble at all attracting interest in my mid 40's when I went to London for a couple of years. It took me less than a month to land a job and I had a couple of options.

My biggest piece of advice to anyone who wants a long technical career is to keep learning new things. Don't rely on your day job to train you in what you need. Follow up on stuff that interests you and invest some of your "me" time on staying current in areas that interest you. I've seen a lot of people drop out of the industry because they were over specialised. I know APL experts, Cobol and DB2 experts, C++ with MFC experts, etc, etc. None of them are working as programmers any more. It's tempting to thing that Java enterprise and C# and Ruby on Rails and Python and whatever you think is the best paycheck will last forever. It won't and over time you will slowly become obsolete. A 40 something (or 50 something) with no relevant technology experience will be seen as less valuable than a 30 something because people will be imagining you are simply going through the motions. The fact that you aren't getting sucked into the new (and horrible) programming fads makes you even less attractive because the people hiring you have been pulled into those fads. So it's important to be able to speak the speak and walk the walk.

So what are the MFC experts doing nowadays?

Anyway that's precisely the problem - either get sucked into all the horrible fads or not finding a job. That's a pretty bad choice.

Learn just enough about the fads so you can hold a conversation about them, but don't invest heavily in every one of them. You don't need to tech hop every year - give things at least a couple years to shake out. This will let you skip a lot of the time wasting BS that comes with fad driven development.

This. This is how I treat customer fads as a consultant, so far to good effect. Consulting isn’t too different than interviewing for jobs, especially the part where you have to convince new customers that you know what you’re doing and are worth your rate.

This is great advice. The other thing about learning a little bit about all the new fads is that you can fairly quickly figure out bits where going a bit more deeply will help you out in general. For example, I would not recommend using React for every front end project (or even most ;-) ), but playing with React and understanding what it was trying to accomplish legitimately made me a better programmer.

Maybe I'm unusually fortunate that a lot of day jobs I've had at one point or another gave me an opportunity to learn new tech (that wasn't the one that got me hired there). In the past 5 years I've mostly been alternating between c# & javascript/typescript.

There would be new projects & not many people in the company experienced in the tech required (due to hiring staff that has experience in their bread & butter current projects) and it was often pretty easy to jump on those ships - it does require the confidence that you'll be able to ramp up quickly!

Also when a technology is new there is a shortage of people with experience using it & companies relax experience expectations when hiring.

The industry is backwards. Would you rather have a 25-year-old plumber, architect, photographer, chef, or a 50-year-old one?

Artists get better with age. Programming is an art. All tedious tasks get automated away. All that's left are design decisions. Making good design decisions is what people mean by "taste". Taste gets better with experience.

A young person may have more physical energy, but to paraphrase Steve Jobs, they don't have any taste. Their surplus physical energy could be a liability, as they'll just write more code that's hard to maintain. Of course there are exceptions. Don't discriminate by age in either direction. Ask for experience, and make your final judgment after examining their portfolio (just as you would an architect or photographer), looking for signs of good taste.

Further reading: "Taste for Makers", by Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

I think current gigs want younger people not for their performance but their „price”. They work overtime without payment, are relatively cheap and you need alot of them. For every architect you have in the company there are like 20-30 developers of lower grade. So the demand for „design making” people is just not there.

The industry has been very biased; from 1940 there weren't many programmers, very quickly the number of programmers doubled, most had little experience. Through the 1970s there weren't many programmers with more than 5 years experience. As the number grew so fast, through the 1980s most programmers still had less than 5 years experience. Same through the 1990s. Probably still the same through the 2000s and 2010s and with how many people are learning to code, probably still the same now, most programmers have <5 years experience.

That means most employers have only ever seen developers with <5 years experience, working in teams of same, using languages and tools designed by and for same. How could such employers properly value 30 or 50 years of experience?

I think a large part of the problem is that the software industry still doesn't know how to measure someone's value systematically and reliably. Metrics like LOC/day or bug minimization or speed of project delivery differ widely across problem domains and the technical level of contributor.

Does wisdom count in software? Practically and generally, I'd say no. When setting hiring priorities, cost trumps wisdom in all but the most senior roles.

(BTW, at 62, I've been coding professionally for 34 years. I wish I were valued more by my employers with each passing year. But if it's so, they hide it well.)

I learned programming in Fall 1961 from Forman Acton at Princeton. Programmed IBM 601 in Bell I, IBM 1620 in Fortran II. First job was summer 1962 at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman programming the PDP-1 in assembly. Never stopped working as a programmer. Main language now is Python. I am machine learning architect at Sigma Labs Inc. I am 80 and I played NIM on a computer built to do ballistics in 1947 at Maxon Corporation.

In my company, we can get "Senior Developer" title after 3 to 4 year experience.

What your current title?

Real senior developers with lots of experience are usually shown the finger in our industry. There’s no such title to reflect 57 years of experience; i’ve heard it unofficially refered as baggage

Yeah, your titles become more amazing until around 40 years of age, then they start degrading again.

Of course, if you stay where you are your salary doesn’t, so :/

Sadly that is a very common situation. Thus even more fitting to celebrate those who are still working, learning and enjoying their programming careers.

Jurassic Developer (with all the respect).

Senior Citizen Developer

boo

methusalem, god of code :-)

In French (I work in France), sénior (senior) sounds similar to seigneur (lord), so I use this to my advantage.

Senior Senior Developer

I'm a young pup compared to the OP - started programming in 1973 (unless you count the DigiComp I..) My children had a license plate frame made for me that has has my current title (at least around the family): Granddaddo, Gerihacktrics Specialist! (At work I'm currently a Principal Software Engineer. Last gig, I was Senior Principal. Would be fun to make Fellow one of these days.)

Senior^19 Developer.

In our industry traditional titles are exhausted so early so here's localized quantification [0] (on a lighter note, no disrespect to OP or anyone). I'm in KSD title range.

0: Kilo senior developor (min 10 years) mega senior developer (min 20 years) giga senior developer (min 30 years) tera senior developer (min 40 years) peta senior developer (min 50 years) exa senior developer (min 60 years) zeta senior developer (min 70 years)

My current title is Director of Analytics Innovation. But I am an individual contributor - I don't have anyone reporting to me.

Goals! As a mere 49-year-old who learned to code 38 years ago and only has 15 years' professional experience, it pisses me off to hear people whining about ageism in tech; I'm sure certain sectors of the hotshot startup world are biased towards "bright young things" but as far as I can tell there are many orgs that have a place for grizzled greybeards and I certainly don't plan to ever retire. What would I do? I'm still amazed every day that they pay me good money for doing the thing that has been my hobby since age 11, and even if I didn't need the money I'm sure it would continue to be one of my favourite hobbies that I would do just for fun.

Could elaborate a bit on what got you into the IT industry at age 34 and what you were doing before that? How easy/difficult was it for you to find a good, well-paying job and build a career?

> I'm sure certain sectors of the hotshot startup world are biased towards "bright young things" but as far as I can tell there are many orgs that have a place for grizzled greybeards

What kind of organizations are you referring to? / How would one go about finding organizations like these?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm in my late twenties and considering doing a PhD in mathematical physics before leaving academia for good and entering the IT industry. Like you, I started programming in my early teens and while I kept coding as a hobby and also worked as a part-time software engineer for a startup for ~1½ years, I obviously have much less professional experience under my belt than those "bright young minds" who enter the industry in their early twenties. So I'm somewhat afraid that it'll be even harder for me to enter the industry when I'm in my early/mid thirties than it is right now.

It just occurred to me how interesting it will be for the new generation who start so much younger and longer life expectancy what they'll see in their long careers. Given how much has changed in your story, from Fortran to AlphaZero and GPT-2. How much will change in theirs? Will the singularity appear to be in sight? Will programmers disappear like telephone operators?

"longer life expectancy" is a very optimistic thing to say

Adjusting for surviving birth, life expectancy varies wildly in both directions (although even considering that, "longer" is definitely less of a promise now than it has been for the last several decades).

I don't know if it's particularly optimistic - if you're (accurately) saying current life expectancy numbers don't take catastrophic risks into account, neither did calculations of life expectancy back then. Unless you think there is a higher risk of catastrophic events now than there was during the cold war.

Life expectancy has plateaued and may be trending down in the U.S. The culprit is likely obesity. (See https://time.com/5100737/obesity-lowering-life-expectancy-un... )

Let's say larger variance in life expectancy--we expect a longer tail of a new generation living longer.

Hats off to you, genedangelo! I retired last year after about 40 years of work but I am still programming. I think that we as programmers are lucky to be in a profession where our personal interest and professional work can coincide. More importantly, we can carry our interest well into retired life. This is a golden age for people like us: we can buy microcontrollers for peanuts or we could have a supercomputer-like cluster in the cloud (for a brief period) for a reasonable amount of money. And anything in between.

I was thrilled to see Walter Bright (@WalterBright) on here a few days ago! I don't think he's been working for 57 years but he certainly has a few stories to tell.

57 years is an amazing innings in such a relentless field - congratulations, and long may you continue.

I've seen him quite active, providing his thoughts on e.g. language designs and relating them to his choices for D.

Congrats! Just curious, as someone with so much experience, do you still have to do coding challenges when interviewing for positions?

Yes. Read up on data structures and their big-O costs.

Most of the "interviews" are conducted by very-recent college graduates who know the algorithms and their big-O.

The fact that I taught Data Structures didn't seem to matter as none of them actually read my resume (despite having a copy they brought with them).

It is more of a "hazing ritual" than a job interview.

Serious question: How do you sit and type? What chair and what angle has worked best for your back and neck all these years?

I sit in an office chair (tilted back slightly) with 3 large HD monitors about 3 feet from my eyes - I have special glasses for that range. The monitors can be switched among 3 computers, and the wireless keyboard/mouse has a switch to move from one computer to another. Most importantly, I have a dog that needs walking several times a day, and that forces me to get up and walk a couple miles every day.

I have the same 3 monitor, 'computer glasses' setup... Did your optometrist give you grief about them?

The first time I said I wanted a pair of single focus lenses for the computer (so I could use my whole field of view..), I got a lot of flak about "you should get bifocals". I haven't needed to drive anywhere in the last couple of years, so I basically never where my distance glasses anymore.

lately though.. Seems like they're getting more used to the idea. Maybe more people doing it ?

I hate bifocals. Hate them. Hate hate hate.

I've got the computer glasses, and then the regular ones. I swap as needed.

I've not had to try them yet. I'm not looking forward to it. Seems like it would be unnatural/tiring.

For myself, it was my optometrist's idea. I get one "free" pair a year from my vision coverage, and when a year rolled in where my old prescription hadn't changed much, he suggested getting computer glasses instead.

My only problem is forgetting to change glasses when I go out, and not really noticing til I hit a main road and wonder why the street signs are blurry.

I'm so near sighted, I wouldn't make it out the door without my glasses :-)

Have you tried the 'blue blocker' type lenses? If so, how do you like them ?

Not the person you're replying to, but I've had the blue-blocker (I think Costco calls them 'computer lenses' confusingly). They do shift colours towards the yellow range, but not as much as the computer "night shift" (so that the rest of the world looks normal) :) I've found that I can sit at my computer for longer, compared to when I didn't have blue-blocking lenses. It's probably just personal preference :)

I'm also very nearsighted :)

I've heard that blocking blue light can help you sleep better...And I'm usually on the computer before bed. Have you noticed any difference w.r.t sleep ? Thanks!

That's interesting. In the UK, it's pretty much standard. In fact I think (IANAL) that employment law mandates that the company has to pay for your amusingly-named "VDU" glasses if the majority of your work is in front of a screen and the optometrist says you need them. I got some recently and it's changed my life after several uncomfortable years of peering at odd angles through varifocals.

That's what worried me about it...having to move my head too much in order to see the screens. I have big lenses that let me use my peripheral vision naturally.

What do you use three different computers for? Running different OS’s I assume?

A true inspiration, thanks for sharing.

I'm amazed your eyes held up from probably at least 20 years of CRTs bombarding you! That's great!

I should also mention that I recently bought a Flexispot stand up desk converter. So now I can stand up and work when I want to. It only accommodates two of my monitors, but that's all I really need anyway.

hello dear Gene,

Wow, I wasn't even born in 1963 (1965 issue here), and I really got into programming around 15 or so, so 40 years and counting on this end. Super impressive that you still enjoy coding and do not plan to retire.

These days I only code for myself, I've stopped doing commercial work but will occasionally help out in places where my particular combination of talents is useful. I also don't plan on giving it up at all but you never know what the future will bring and I'm very sure that my mental faculties are not at the same level where they were 20 years ago, nor do I get as fired up about a cool algorithm as I did back then.

Being born around that time and seeing all this development has been a ride that I would not trade for anything else except for - retrospectively - a career in music (which still is my first love) or - corny, but timely - being an astronaut. But not to fly circles around the earth. So all things considered I feel both lucky and privileged and I wonder if those are things that you share or would care to talk about.

best regards & a very warm welcome to HN.

I am a little older and maybe a little more than 40 years experience. I still love it and program at home and work. I still get excited about new stuff or learning a new platform (I am setting up Hashicorp Vault at the moment, awesomely interesting). My first love was electronics, which I still do at home, so maybe my experience is a little different. The last few years I have been learning abstract algebra and some nuclear physics. At this stage I can't imagine ever stopping.

I think you may be. I got to try programming a Basic timesharing system in 1963 when I was a kid, in 1972 I had a summer job doing FORTRAN, and then started a full time programming job after getting a BS in Physics from UCSB in 1973.

So you have ten more years working than I do.

I'm at 50 years (so far).

Super!

Thank you for making me feel young in this crowd! Started in 1974, still at it.

Probably close. The first software program ran 21 June 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored-program_computer) and not many people who start working at 16 keep programming until 74.

Maurice Wilkes programmed from 1949 (if we're counting from when the program ran on a stored-program computer) until his death in 2010, so OP has at least 4 years to go to make the record.

At 38 years and a graduate of the ZX81 school of programming I am but a mere whippersnapper.

But I look forward to the day when I have accumulated sufficient experience to truly understand Lisp.

May the code by with you. Always.

For a moment there I thought you meant you were 38 years old, meaning you would have been tapping on that membrane keyboard in your nappies :-) But yeah, happy days. My school had a couple of ZX81s and an Apple ][ which got me started until the BBC Micro came out and we got a ZX Spectrum at home.

Just a note that Georgia Tech http://www.gradadmiss.gatech.edu/62-or-older allows those over 62 to take graduate and undergraduate classes tuition free.

This applies only if you reside in Georgia.

Fist bump.

Congrats on an awesome career. You are an inspiration. Slice up fulfillment data in Fortran II before rules and drama -- legit. What are the younger programmers doing wrong? (I don't think we are much quicker - at anything). Also #1 on hacker news.

I'm happy to see that you've kept up with new fields and changes in the industry. I've worked with several older programmers and they've usually been very set in their ways and shown little interest in developing new skills.

I know what you mean. Many of my contemporaries never got past the mainframes. I'll have to admit that it took me a little while to accept the PC to be more than any intelligent terminal. I was lucky in that I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation from 1976 to 1982 - they pioneered distributed computing.

And then over at Google it's mostly VIM and browsers, deploying on machines hardly anyone ever sees. I'm pretty sure they exist, but I have no hard evidence of that.

The PCs really aren't much more than intelligent terminals. You were right, and you should have held your ground and been eventually correct.

The first time I programed in mainframe, I suffered a lot. I am young. We young people at least myself is people programming from top to down, but you guys, old programmer programed from down to top. I mean from low level to high level of computer. Early days, people would have to learn hardware a lot to program. This is my impression.

Thanks for posting. Just laying the feels wide open here. It's an inspiration to know you're still at it and I sure hope to be at it too. Lots of worthwhile problems to still solve.

My mother is still coding Fortran at 76. I think she may have started a couple of years after you though. Fortran forever!

Could you talk more about what you remember from your time at Mitchell Engineering Company? You worked on order processing and fulfillment...what was lacking in their process that they wanted to computerize? Was your project deemed a business success? Were you happy while you were working on it? Was it just you or a team?

Just briefly, then I have to hit the sack - I'm on the east coast. I developed a set of programs to allow them to map out the design of a steel building, and my programs would calculate all the pieces they need to load on the truck to build it. Mitchell was very progressive in this area - this type of computerization enabled them to have the building up in record time. A Civil Engineer worked with me and used the computer to design the main support beams. Between the two of us the entire process was automated.

For me I’ve learned programming is one of the purest feelings of joy I experience. Even regardless of the language or environment. It’s so thrilling to get to take something apart and put it back together to solve a problem. I feel so lucky to have such work. Congrats. I hope I can make it to 74 writing code!

Congratulations! I hope it's okay this has turned into an AMA :D. Feel free to not answer!

What do you think the biggest shift for day to day programming was for you in your 57 years?

You got me beat by two years. I wrote my first FORTRAN program in July 1965. I also wrote code at 12,000 ft altitude. I'm still writing code.

Here's my bio:

http://www.kyber.ca/rants/UNIVAC%20history.php

Amazing career. You inspire me. Not only because you have continued this long, but because you have progressed your education and skills. You have veered toward ultra cool programming with machine learning. While I only work on CRUD webservices... which there is a big need for, but lacks the coolness of machine learning.

When considering going back to school or focussing efforts on writing software for employers/clients, I always side on writing software. But with your story I will give more weight to going back to school, as it might lead to new avenues.

I'm in my 40's and really enjoy these stories from older programmers to help me stay motivated. I like to believe that my best days are always ahead of me, and your story helps me affirm that.

First, thank you for sharing and welcome to HN! :)

Second, I want to take a moment to commemorate and celebrate my father, who enrolled at MIT in 1967, graduated w a Master's in CSEE, spent 25 years working at GenRad and continued working as a software engineer (at MathWorks) until the week before he passed away in early 2018. So he was a programmer for over 50 years. While I'm unlikely to reach that milestone (having started "late", a couple years after graduating college in 1996), my younger brother wrote his first program at age 5 and is still at it today (36 years and counting).

No particular point to make here, just reflecting on our chosen field and feeling very, very fortunate to be part of this community. Be well! :)

Very impressive and significant! My experience began on the Altair 8800 as a kid in my brothers' bedroom. Continued on personal computers to the present day. So maybe the longest (possible) PC experience, but I'm sure it's shared by many.

I thought I was an old timer, with my Fortran 77 experience. But Fortran II! If it followed the naming convention, that was from 1902, right?

Welcome to Hacker News. They don't always treat us graybeards well so you'll need to be tough.

Inventor of Forth, Chuck Moore still codes. He is 81. He funded his last startup at tender age of 70 (Green Arrays).

How did you avoid going into "management" ?? Have you ever been "promoted" to project manager?

I was "offered" a management job 8 times. I turned them down (despite some of them involving a raise).

Why would I go from the top of my skill set (programming) to the bottom of a job I'm unable to perform?

I can barely manage myself some days. And I am not a "people person".

This made my day, absolutely wonderful achievement! Especially the area that you’re now in...it’s really not an easy task to retrain yourself for ML.

I’m 12 years in professionally and still loving every second of it! Currently been slugging out Leetcode problems all hours of the day to try and get myself to an org with a proper engineering track. So maybe further down the line I still might be able to solve computer problems (in some way or form) during my day.

I really hope to someday to be able to come onto HN and do the same thing as you :)

Funny. I too with 14 years also with a lot of love for programming want to have a career like him. Like you I too am leetcoding so that I can get into a proper engineering company where I will not be discriminated based on age.

Hope we both will do the same as what the OP did.

Best of luck to you when you do the interviews! Everything just takes time and practice :)

Is there any way we can meet you sir? At a conference or meetup etc. You're an inspiration and that should be an honor for someone like me. I'm 35 and 17 years of coding and enjoying every moment of that. Though I sometimes think it's been a long time, I'm getting old, etc. but compared to you, I'm a kid and have a long way to go.

My answer to people who ask me "For how long do you think you can code, you need to become a manager or whatever" has always been "Until I die".

In September 1961, I learned programming from Forman Acton at Princeton. Programmed IBM 601 in Bell I, IBM 1620 and IBM 709 in Fortran II, Algol, COBOL, assembly. First job was July 1962 at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman programming DEC PDP-1 in assembly. Never stopped working as a programmer. Currently programming Linux computers mostly in Python. I am machine learning architect for Sigma Labs, Inc. I am 80. I played NIM in 1947 on the front panel of a ballistics computer at Maxon Corporation.

My grandfather was born in 1945 and worked as a programmer in East Germany and then unified Germany. He retired a few years ago.

He started as a mathematicatian, and probably worked with computers professionally only after 1963.

Programming in East Germany was .. interesting. For example, they used punch cards long after they were out of date in the west. My grandfather still has lots of punch card origami he did while waiting for his batch jobs to finish.

That sounds so great! You were working in an area where computers had black-green terminals, you saw when people were afraid what will happen if the date changes to 2000 :scream:, you saw the Sony Ericsson handy area, smartphones, tables, wearables and now ML! Exciting man and I want to be able to write here in ~40 years.

Congrats to all what you have achieved! :clap:

This is really great! Keep doing what you are doing, Sir.

I once had the pleasure of interviewing a German consultant who was into Android programming and he was like 48 or 50 years old. The interview was like listening to stories of his programming days with various hardware(Commodore etc) and it was fascinating that too with his precise German English accent.

Awesome! I have no plans to retire. I turn 50 in a few weeks and just returned back to the technology field after leaving it for 14 years.

Eventually I plan on getting another masters or a PhD in data science, statistics or some other computer science field.

If I could I'd buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brain. If you went to FAU then we are relatively close.

I’m curious as to when you knew/decided it was time to fully immerse yourself into a new frame of programmatic thinking. Switching languages is sometimes simple, if the syntax is similar, but what about a low level to a medium level language? IE assembly to java or something. Or perhaps what invited the change to study the operations component versus the analytical component?

A lot of people have comfort in their current programming language, and talk down about other languages.. resistant to change. And sometimes they are right because things are evolving too quickly that they could be a fad or become a standard and popular.

Again, curious as to when/how you felt it was a good time to learn something new. And this is specifically geared towards your later years.

I’m in my early 30s. And with technology changing so much, I’m curious if I’ll still be in touch with it all in 30+ years. And how you seemed to accomplish it.

Thanks and I hope I can hear from you!

I think it's awesome that you have had a long career and still going. I know of one gentleman in a similar situation. I think he may be in his late 70's or even early 80's. He's currently working on porting some Fortran or Cobol code he wrote in his 20's from his first job ever!

Bob Smith who codes the NARS2000 APL interpreter was programming from at least 1969:

http://www.nars2000.org

http://www.sudleyplace.com/APL/projects.html

An interview with you would be fantastic.

Do any of the computer museums do that?

My mom used to interview people, mostly seniors, to capture oral traditions, get first hand accounts. I think the process she used was called "oral history". A simple format that any one could use to do their own interviews. She was long time volunteer for our local Swede-Finn historical org. She figured out how to do this once her parent's friends started passing away.

A friend played fiddle and was really into Americana. Most of the musicians were 70+. When they passed, all their lore and many of their songs were lost. So she started recording her friends and capturing their bios, life stories, stories about the music. She self-published a book and cassette combo. Two volumes, IIRC.

Just two examples of what I'm suggesting.

That sounds great. People just is like the cassette/volumes, recording history, which is more vivid.

You've got me beat. I learned to program in the late 70's taking adult evening classes at local university (PL/1 punched card batch system), got my first home computer in 1979(NASCOM-1 Z80 1MHz kit - DIY solder assembly), took Math/CS in university, then started programming professionally in 1982, and still going strong.

My first job was at Acorn Computers Ltd (UK), writing Acorn ISO Pascal in 6502 assembler, and fast forward almost 40 years currently working for major Telecom writing C++ frameworks/libraries for Linux. Still enjoy it as a hobby too, currently writing my third C++ neural network framework (full blown, GPU accelerated, etc), with lifetime goal of eventually building autonomous robot with animal/human level AI.

I am 47, I started with basic a TI99 4/A, I loved computers but I stopped at school when I was 15. At 30 I went back to evening classes and in 10 years I finished high-school and an IT degree while working full-time. I managed to get a job in Italy (I am Italian) but it was frustrating there that I emigrated to England. I have been hating my life and job since the superficiality and ignorance of people, all these horrible corporations using Java or .NET. On March I finished a contract and I cannot find another one, because of the changes in the IR35 law that the pathetic UK government made and the virus after. I was working only for the money, now everything is gone.

I am 47, too coward to kill myself, too terrified to take more shit.

I have been a coder for 9+ years now but im seeing variations in my X-Rays of my neck due to long hours of sitting, i guess.

Do you face any such health issues related to the profession? Or do you do/practice anything that can avoid such health conditions related to the profession?

My experiences with programmers that have more than 30 years on the job fall into 1 of 2 categories...

1. Constant complaining about the state of things(too much memory, too complicated, back in my day, blah, blah, blah). Why do I have to learn git?, containers?, on, and on, and on. VMs are just fine, what's wrong with java 1.4?, ... exhausting . These programmers probably sucked when they had 5 years of experience and continue to suck today. Crossed arms, learned helplessness level 99.

2. Crazy life long learners that have ridden one technology wave after another for decades on end. When something new comes out they are on it like flies on picnic food.

It's my greatest, most sincere hope that I have the energy, temperament to become the latter.

Thanks for sharing!

> Since then, all my jobs for the past 57 years have involved computer programming

As others have pointed out, there are definitely older, working programmers like Margaret Hamilton [0], but who may not have programming as the main part of their job. Would you say programming is the main part of your day as a data scientist (I have no idea, as I've thought DS could encompass a variety of non-programming work)?

A common question that comes up with mid-career programmers is whether they should take the jump into management – how have you dealt with that crossroads throughout your career?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367138

Small shout out for Sir Maurice Wilkes, who was involved in some of the earliest stored program concept computers back in the late 40s (designed and built EDSAC in 48/49, and the inventor of microprogramming in the early 50s. Worked in the Computer Lab in Cambridge for years, spent some time in the US, and returned to the lab in the early 2000's. Was still a feature in the labs until not long before his death in 2010, at the grand old age of 97. Would have been around the 60 odd year mark at that stage. I can't speak to how much he was working at that stage, but still a very impressive career and a very impressive individual.

I'm 28 and I wanna be like you. You don't know how inspiring you are, buddy :)

Thanks for sharing!

I am exactly half your age and have been programming seriously for only for 25 years (if we consider talking over serial/COM ports at 1200 bauds or passing printer escape sequences from a DOS ncurses-like software written in BASIC serious :), and I can't imagine not programming in the future. Programming is the art of creating solutions for me, and I am sure you can relate!

However, I do hope to retire early, to allow me to work down the long bucket list of ideas I have.

As with anyone in programming for so long, I am sure you have a similar bucket list :)

Thus, my question is: what has kept you at your jobs?

Congrats! I love reading inspiring posts on HN!

There are probably many of us who will probably follow in your footsteps. Provided that Stack Overflow continues to exist, I have no plans to ever stop programming either.

Do you still type source code?

How do you rate your mental agility versus your younger self?

So far I really haven't sensed any mental decrease, but I know there must be some. I do type some source code in Python and R, but primarily I use a rapid applications development tool that allows me to build custom machine learning algorithms and ad hoc analytics to work on big data.

Do you consider what you do to be programming? How does it compare to, say, hand-writing C?

Surely he considers it programming if he self describes as an active programmer?

He might be doing other code work, as well.

I was honestly curious how it compared. What tools and processes transfer over, that kinb of thing.

There is no doubt what I do is programming. It's similar in some ways to SQL, but the tool I use enables me to implement much more complexity than possible in plain SQL. It actually enables a lot of the functionality available in a procedural language like C, but within a structure built around database manipulations and joins. In this way it breaks the bounds of memory constraints and becomes a big data programming language. Admittedly, I don't have to type out individual commands, but that's a good thing. The logic is the same, but the development time is much less. It enables you to concentrate more on the algorithm design while the command syntax and other minutiae are handled in a much more efficient (and maintainable) manner.

That's quite interesting! Thanks for responding. :)

You don't type; is the way you create this logic similar to Ladder Logic, Pure Data or Touch Designer?

I'm 30 now and my background is more in mathematics, so I do focus a lot on Python and R. A lot of my work is in statistics and also in agriculture. Hopefully, but the time I am your age, I will have some secret skills to teach the young folk. I hope to do more mathematics in my everyday work as I get older.

I just realised I need to walk my dog more often after the lockdowns are getting less strict!

Thanks for posting, it's good to see long-time developers that did not move to management :)

How many jobs have you held, and what was your criteria when switching jobs (apart from any possible family reasons)?

Looking back, is there any favorite technology of yours (language, concept, anything)

Do you feel the industry is buzzword-driven to a significant extent? (e.g. things get rebranded, reinvented, reimplemented on latest tech instead of fixing and improving existing things, business value does not get better but software often gets more resource-hungry)

Thank you for this. As a 40yo with 15 years into this profession, I have been having recurring feeling like “being at the crossroads”. This is exactly what I needed to get inspired. Respect.

@genedangelo As a programmer, do you feel pressure with time passage? Have you felt any problem with memory or speed of thinking, have you ever thought about how it was in certain stages of your life from the perspective of abilities to do things?

No disrespect, after only 20 years (third of your time) sometimes I feel that it was much easier to solve things in the beginning, so sometimes I am kind of worried what will happen if I ever live to that age. Generally I am interested how does cognitive ability changes with age.

I'm not sure if he is still programming now (he was a few years ago at least) but Jeff Whittle started programming in 1962 on a Ferranti Sirius[0]. He was awarded an AO (Order of Australia) for his services to the Mining Industry a few years ago due to his mining optimisation software.

[0]https://whittleconsulting.com.au/livebook/downloads/3.5-Stor...

This is quite inspiring to read. What languages do you work with these days? What do you miss about the "old way" of programming? You have such a unique perspective.

No, probably not the longest-serving, though maybe longest-serving who is on HN.

Also: 74 - 57 = 17 years of age when you started as a full time programmer. How did you pull that off in 1963?

I actually was only 16, but turned 17 right after I started. I had finished all the math and science courses in my high school in Mississippi and I had a lot of extra time in my senior year. As a junior, I scored the highest in the U.S. on an engineering aptitude test and got a write-up in the local paper. Mitchell Engineering was trying to get into computers but didn't know how to find people who could program. When they heard about me, they approached me with the idea of becoming a programmer. At the time, I had no idea what a programmer was, but they hired me and trained me on the job.

Wonderful to hear that, and congratulations to you for that accomplishment. I worry those type of opportunities are no more, or at least much rarer.

I always wonder what the next thing like programming is that isn’t mainstream yet. Maybe there is an opportunity in that. Quantum computing? But then they’d hire phds I guess.

As someone who runs a quantum computing software company, I can confirm your intuition. Almost everyone we hire to work on quantum computing directly has a PhD.

In Israel at least there are probably hundreds (out of a population of 8,000,000) of programmers working professionally below the age of 18. They don't get on-the-job training, though, it's just so easy to teach yourself at home or in high school.

When I was 17 I started a program connecting high tech firms to winners of a programming competition for high schoolers that is still going, 14 years later :-) But I was far from the first to do this here.

Whereabouts in MS?

Keep on, however, and soon I'm sure you will be the longest serving.

What a great post. It’s inspiring to know it’s possible to stay in this industry so long. Having read many stories of programmers having to retire early or switch into management or different careers, it’s wonderful to hear from someone who has kept going. Have you had any physical health challenges along the way such as RSI/arthritis? Im asking because I’m only in my mid 30s and already having difficulty with arthritis in my fingers.

I have a question, did your wage stop going up at some point?

Where do you work now? And also, I've heard that at Google for example, there is prejudice against older programmers? Have you experienced anything like that?

Yes. The term used is "not a good cultural fit".

google had a fair number of older programmers (like over 50) when I was there. they had a group for them, 'greygler', also gaygler (not positive of the spelling). google has a bunch of employee groups that are portmanteau's of something + google.

Phrases like that along with the policy of having new Googlers (Nooglers?) wear propeller hats really turns me off of the idea of working at Google. It sounds like joining a fraternity. Maybe a goofy one but still a frat.

In my experience people who don't work there tend to focus on the "weird" stuff like it's the entire culture. It's not like you get forced to wear the hat for a week.

I believe that (the odious portmanteau) “greygler” is defined as being over 40.

Oh, so I was one then. I didn't join the club :-)

I definitely experienced age discrimination in one company that will go nameless. The small company I'm working for now has been great - I love the culture. However, they were just bought by Thomson Reuters and this Monday I will officially be a TR employee. I understand their culture is similar, and I'm hoping it's true!

I think the age discrimination comes from the mostly younger staff, not so much the company. Works out the same, of course, when you’re told you aren’t a “good cultural fit.”

A company is its staff

Yes, but company policy and interview decisions don't necessarily match.

That quickly turned metaphysical. If company policy is neither enforced nor followed, is it really company policy? If so, "company policy" is just an abstract term that doesn't necessarily reflect the company in any way.

It really boils down to what I've already said. A company is its staff. What its staff does and accepts other staff doing is ultimately its policy. Anything else that they might have written down into a document that isn't enforced or followed is not company policy, but a way to compartmentalize responsibility and blame once its actual policies come under scrutiny

I didn't mean to get metaphysical. In my experience interviewing for software dev jobs, the interviews are usually conducted by the IT/software dev staff and the hiring manager, not the entire company staff. HR may or may not get involved, but usually they aren't making a hiring decision. The company may gladly hire a 50-something manager, or accountant, but the group of developers interviewing someone my age will have a bias against an older programmer, regardless of policy or whom they might agree to hire in some other role.

The company (and the law) have rules about discrimination and fairness, but when a group of 20-somethings interviews an older programmer those rules may not matter. Fixing age discrimination probably shouldn't focus on laws and company policies, no company has a policy condoning age discrimination that we need to fix. It's the software dev culture that equates age and experience with "not a good fit," for whatever reason. I have my own theories what those reasons amount to but regardless of why I think it happens, it clearly does.

That is wonderful! Hey I'm from Florida too! (I assume you've at least been there since you mentioned FAU) :) You are doing what I hope to: code even if I 'retire' I intend to code till the day I can't anymore.

Welcome to HN! It's a great place, has a few things I don't like here or there, but overall a great place to learn all sorts of things and learn about all sorts of people from varying backgrounds.

I only managed 40 years programming before I "got retired" by the company I worked for. I was past my full Social Security entitlement age so I could have voluntarily retired but I wasn't ready. They felt they could hire a couple of younger people for what they were paying me. That was true, but they lost a lot of experience that will cost them more dollars than their salaries!

Whether you are or not, I congratulate you on your achievement. And the fact that you’re posting it on HN definitely counts for extra!

Well done!

I just retired at 78 after 55 years as a programmer, database and GIS specialist. Now I'm using those skills pro bono to help farmers adopt wireless sensors and take advantage of the latest IOT developments with Arduino/Raspberry Pi type technology. Started on punch cards, TTY 33 paper tape and mag tapes on a CDC 6400.

For those in the same boat, any tips you can provide to overcome the commonly cited barriers?

For example: maintaining the required mental agility needed to do the job, learning new technologies that come and go, overcoming relevant biases, staying relevant as "less experienced" workers seem sufficient to do the same job, etc.

I had a pleasure working with Andrey Michailovich Smirnov when I was around 36 in 2007. He was 75 at the time and was definitely run circles around me. For example, he was able to produce working compiler for subset of Fortran with compilation into dynamic dataflow machine in two-three weeks.

I don't think he was retired.

But was he able to center a div within another div without looking it up on Stackoverflow?

You've given this 51 year old coder (31 years in the coding seat) new hope! I did 21 years of those in start-ups, so it's been kind of harrowing. Hoping this year to go full time remote. Started with RPG-III/System38s, now doing nodeJS/nextJS/react. Adapt or die :)

Congratulations!!. What made you stick to Programming and not go the path of leadership? Are you on linkedin ?

Peter Neumann's first programming job was in 1953. He is still active in CS research, and is co-author of a 2019 paper.

http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/#2

My father-in-law retired from a software engineering position at age 75. I'd be 57 years in the industry if I retired then. It seems doable; I know a couple of software types approaching or over 70 now.

This would be convenient because the 32-bit signed time_t apocalypse is in early 2037. :-)

Shorewall author is about your age https://sourceforge.net/p/shorewall/mailman/message/36589783...

I started programming as a child in around 1979 and have been programming professionally since 1987. So you have me beat by quite a margin. Congratulations! I can't imagine stopping programming as long as I am still capable of doing it.

I wonder if ageism will lessen as there are so many programmers now getting older. I suppose it's mostly in the hands of the hiring manager. I don't know... it's just a thought; would be curious to hear others' opinions.

> I am now a data scientist developing cloud-based big data fraud detection algorithms using machine learning and other advanced analytical technologies.

Put that in a pitch deck and raise whatever you want!

J/K! Congratulations on the career, success and evolution!

Hey man!.. I'm 53, and I design 3D synthetic worlds with physic simulators in python and C++ for the aeronautic industry. That's on top of still running strong webdev with the latest tech. So yeah, what's your worry?

Question: How has your enjoyment of programming ebbed and flowed over the years?

OP is an OG

That is great to see someone who has being doing this for so long. True respect for someone like this instead of someone who is just jumping the band wagon because tv show like Mr. Robot, the React FB, side effect.

Respect for how you achieved continuous learning along the way

1/ Did you ever feel isolated in a group because of age? 2/ How did you manage to stay focused when your colleagues may just be growing up the ladder?

Mate first of all my huge huge respect to you for keeping at it. This is true passion and I really really wish that see more of it. I hope you are doing what you enjoy for another 50 years at least!!!

Keep at it! I'm 68, started programming when I was 17 on a PDP-8 with Dartmouth Basic, paper tape and a teletype. Moved on from there to mainframes, minis, workstations. Still working and learning.

Respect! I plan to do the same when I get old. You are an inspiration Sir.

Congratulations! You're an inspiration!

Tell us, what is the secret to your longevity?

I guess not smoking, no drugs and regular exercise. I really enjoy what I do - the challenge of achieving an analytical objective with limited resources has always given me great satisfaction.

How much exercise, and have you always been physically active?

[I'm more than halfway to your experience but definitely missing this aspect.]

About 1 hour in the gym 4 times a week with a mixture of anaerobic and aerobic always setting goals and constraints on my heart rate (using a Polar monitor). At least that is what I was doing until about 2 years ago, when my personal life changed for a number of reasons. Now, I mainly concentrate on walking 3 or 4 miles a day.

Thanks, that seems like a sustainably attainable goal (and to adapt and not overdo it).

Dam - I thought my 40 years was pushing ... Thanks for the inspiration!

Right? I'm at 22 years professionally and I feel like a dinosaur out here.

Same. I recently got into scheme/lisp and got a newfound inspiration. Seems like older folks were on a better path which got as time passed by more and more corrupted.

I really have to really give lisp a chance sometime. Right now, next on my language list are zig and nim. Crystal could be interesting too!

The really amazing part, is last time I looked - most software developers _leave tech_ after 10 years. This guy has managed to keep the passion over 5x that long!

Hope I'll be able to say the same someday :-)

In an interview Bill Gates said he likes TypeScript. It was about a year ago. Sure he’s not a full time programmer but something tells me the itch will always be there for us the curious! :)

I am so reluctant to accept Microsoft in ECMA, and I have no idea why but I'm even more reluctant to after hearing this.

I mean - sure. I love Gates and all. But things like the Win32 API make me so weary to ever trust his opinion as a SWE. His technical "blessing" on anything doesn't mean much IMO.

I started writing systems software (at IBM, in 360 assembler language) in 1967, but I didn't have your stamina, or single-mindedness: I retired in 1997. But I still write code for fun.

What’s your daily routine now and how has it evolved over the years?

For most of the past 25 years I have been working from home - which is a problem because you never leave your work. The main thing that has changed over recent years is that I now take a 1-hour nap around 2 or 3 PM every day, except when I have conference calls that prevent it. After the nap, I feel rejuvenated and productive. I'm sure this is partly related to old age, but I'm also dyslexic and I think my brain needs a rest from struggling with written communications.

A professor at college can work late into his/her 70s or 80s.

so should be software engineers.

This is truly inspirational, I also plan to keep coding well into 70s/80s, just loving it, or as long as I can.

Well you've got me beat anyway :). My hat's off to you. I started as a hobby in 1975 on an HP3000 mainframe, aged 15, and landed my first professional gig in 1987.

I wonder if you got any health issues related to your profession? What do you do to keep yourself in shape physically and mentally? Congratulations on your success.

If I can include non-professional, then I have been programming since 5th grade in 1981. Started out on Apple][ and TI-99/4A at school and home respectively.

That's a lot of typing, over 57 years. How did you avoid RSI, carpal tunnel, and other injuries / health problems related to programming for this long?

This is pretty cool. Definitely worth documenting I think.

One reason I posted this is because I may attempt to gain recognition in the Guinness World Records. I know my career is longer than the person they now have listed as the "Longest career as a computer software developer" - Kaneyuki Yamaguchi in Japan

Ooh - definitely should go through with that. Also, I'm doing a pilot show interviewing some Tech moguls local to Atlanta. There's a diverse group I'm interviewing from wealthy entrepreneurs to notable employees of bell labs, to people who hold an insane amount of patents. I think you could definitely fit in there somewhere.

ho, man I feel real lonely not finding any people who are like to screw around and code for pleasure. so many smart polished developers that would do something else if enviroment was different, but kills my heart. I would love to code forever, but I am not as tenacious as those are superprofessional I rather would like to enjoy and freeride the waves of code, And I find conversing within community dispiriting.

Am I alone?

Can we have a blog with your programming / life adventures?

Also, it would be wise to name it "genedangelo in byteland" haha! ^_^

you remember my Father. Worked for IBM in the end of 60s, worked as COBOL developer, then went the whole process until become Territory manager from IBM and after retirement, got a second master in Quality assurance testing, and now in the age of 75 got, this week, his Scrum master certification and spend his day busy with python :)

Sir, when you were first starting out what was the standard dress for coders and how have you seen it evolve over the years?

Was it anything like the NASA engineers putting men into space as we see them now? Proper shirts and neckties?

When I started out, business casual was the norm, just as it is today. A big difference was that many of us had "pocket protectors" where we carried our pens, pencils and slide rule. You may have seen those in some movies as a distinguishing feature for nerds.

Curious what is your salary? Can you share?

Who cares about the money when one has an ounce of passion for it

Because you need money to eat and pay rent and most importantly provide for your family or offspring if you have any.

I can probably comfortably finance my family (2 kids, wife works part time) on half my current income, but I want to get paid as much as I can (it's not my top priority, but I certainly prefer more money than less).

Stuff like the comment you answered to is how the people pulling in the actual big bucks hope to get you to work for cheap.

Yeah, I didn’t mean working for free, but working on a less glamorous salary with all the other human perks is sometimes just fine, especially if one’s done raising kids and does work to fulfil the calling

I’m genuinely curious, why you curious? :)

Because money matters. There are good arguments for financial transparency.

The salary curve along the career is as well interesting - is it always increasing, or having some drops?

I wouldn't mind sharing, but I don't want to take the chance that someone in my company could be reading this. I started in 1963 at $1.55 an hour, which was actually pretty good back then. It's mostly been increasing, except for several years when I was self-employed. Now it's more based on my domain knowledge in healthcare fraud detection than on my seniority and skills as a programmer.

It’s interesting you can be a little bit more than twice my age, but have 6 times as much professional experience.

Even if not the longest-serving, you're definitely quite high on the list. Thanks for sharing your story!

My grandmother started working on adding machines at IBM right after college in 1939. She retired in the 1980s programming in Cobol for Nielsen Media Research. Her daughter, my mother, was also a programmer and married another. My father is still programming at 74, though I think he was 73 at his last paying job (doing audio classification with RNNs). All of their tenures are a few years shy of yours, but in aggregate it's competitive.

TL;DR everyone ancestor of mine born since 1916 has been a computer programmer.

If you ever start a blog, I would love to read the stories and experiences you are willing to share.

Nobody said it yet, but you sir, are a badass. I think many of us hope we will be like you.

That’s very nice to hear My question is how do you keep your technical knowledge upto date

Phew. I am about 30 and i fear age discrimination. Love to hear more of these stories.

Started in 1978. No longer program professionally (much) but still do it for fun.

Curious, why would people throw those fancy abbreviations at you all the time.

How many programming languages and frameworks have you learned in total?

Congratulations on the longevity. Here's to the next 57 years!

Kinda related: I’m a second generation programmer and my son a third

Can you do a reddit AMA?? I think many people would be interested

I salute you and all of the others who are still going strong.

you beat me by 3 years

Please someone make a movie about Highlander programmers!

this thread makes me feel a bit better about getting old.

My wife and I BOTH have been programming over 40 years.

Would be interesting to hear some of the stories.

This post is undoubtedly inspiring ! Thank you.

What kind of programming do you do these days?

Someone should get this gentleman on a podcast

!!please get in to anti-cheat engineering for multi-player networked games. the battle between game developers and funded cheat orgs is cold war-esque

Why that field in particular?

I used to be on the side of cheaters, but mostly for fun. Was never funded but could have made profit from it. I know several people who went in that direction and made good money. As teenagers with no qualifications, getting a blue collar job wasn't really an option.

Attempts at protecting a game client from reverse engineering are mostly a waste of time. These protections can be beaten faster than they can be developed. Once a hacker has reverse engineered your wire protocol and cryptography your game client is just one of potentially several.

Has probably changed a lot over the past decade or so, but the developers at the time were wasting their efforts on tightening their software clients rather than using AI, honeypots and other techniques on the server to detect and ban bots. I recall offering to work for a couple of the companies whose games I had developed cheats for, but they rejected me right away without even an interview.

One of the issues is: MMOs are often very repetitive. The actions of your real users are somwhat bot-like to begin with. This means bot developing isn't that difficult. Adding randomness to the behaviour of the bot can make it look like a regular player. I suspect there are some differences which some well trained neural networks might be able to classify, but you need to be really careful of false positives because anything which gets in the way of regular players enjoying the game will lose you customers.

Interesting. For the cheaters, how does the business side of it work?

The revenue is mostly from selling in-game money and rare items which are farmed by bots. There are many trading websites you can use, just search "buy WoW gold" for instance. (I just looked and this market looks incredibly saturated compared 15 years ago).

Selling the bots themselves was an option, but people can just reverse engineer your bot and redistribute it. The bot typically ends up posted on some public forum and becomes a target for the developers to patch against. Also, the more people who are running the bots in game, the less profit you are going to have from selling your items because they're more abundant, so it is better to keep it confidential and just have many accounts farming.

Before the bots were commonplace, there were Chinese "sweatshops" where people were paid scraps to play the games for 20+ hours a day in horrific working conditions. Would hear stories like "man dies from playing MMORPG for 36 hours straight".

You have me beat by 20 years, sir.

Cool, I hope you keep on coding!

Not too shabby.

Karma of 884 in one day.

43 years here

Kudos!

RESPEK

Beautiful

cool

respect

I've been doing this for 10 years, but as a 10x ninja I clearly have racked up 100 man-years of shitting out c.

Jokes aside, i wish I worked with guys who have so much experience. I'm sure it would be humbling.

You're at least old enough to have made the computer that I'm using to do my codding stuff.

Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice. A programmer still programming while growing old is not something to marvel at, it is the normal state of things. Please do not allow people to put you on a pedestal; this would only strengthen the age prejudice present in the industry.

Note: You deserve considerable respect and deference for the experience and skill you have no doubt acquired over the years. Also, since there are so few people like you who started programming in those years, you are an unusual and notable person. But don’t let anyone insinuate that it would have been normal for you to have stopped programming by now. It is not.

The current crop of coders is not going to age well

Why?

Ethics are completely dead JauntyHatAngle and the atmosphere is no longer one of irreverent fun and learning but chilling effects, groupthink and rudderless management I could write a whole paragraph about it but 57 years ago this was viewed as a new frontier whereas now it's literally a war zone

I fear this, too. Too many of the new brains are helpless without frameworks.

This comment is emblematic of the confusing times we are in. You cannot say anything - even "congratulations" - without stepping on someone's toes. Every assumption undoubtedly reveals some sort of partiality, privilege and discrimination. There are so many assumptions from which we must extricate ourselves that we are effectively prohibited from saying anything.

Except it is inspirational, and it is impressive.

That doesn't reveal anything other than the state of the industry.

It is a new industry. Many people have been around for most of it or at least large chunks of it. It's impressive when, out of the 60 odd years of a profession existing, one person has been going at it for 57 years of it.

> Every single person who calls you “inspirational” or “impressive” is actually revealing their own age prejudice.

I agree with this with the word "impressive," but with the word "inspirational," I don't think we can paint with such a broad brush.

Consider that many companies have career progression tracks that escalate engineers out of hands-on engineering roles into e.g. architecture roles or managerial roles. Add on top of that the number of people who burn out doing something they love because they find themselves no longer enjoying it now that it's their job.

I can't find hard numbers for or against my hypothesis, but anyone who stays committed to their passion as their line of work for a sustained period of time, even passing through the stages of burnout that might arise, would likely be inspirational to others in the field who might've burned out or feel like they're about to.

That said, your acute awareness of age bias is something I think more of us in tech (especially infosec in my case) need to actively embrace.

So people complimenting are actually prejudiced against? That's quite a stretch. It's impressive, if nothing else, the span of computer history he's witnessed and continuously was a part of. 63 was practically since the beginning. Also, most people at 74 either don't want to work anymore or (more likely) aren't able to due to their health. So it's doubly inspirational that he/she has the same enthusiasm at 74 that they had at 20.

> So people complimenting are actually prejudiced against?

Not related to your comment, but there's certainly precedent for this:

"You're so articulate"

I think that’s sort of true. I just crossed 50. I‘ve been writing code in one flavor or another since I was a kid.

I’ll probably still be writing code when I’m 74, because I like to make the machines jump and shout. But as a working pro? Probably not.

Personally, I find it impressive that the OP has managed to stay relevant and active. Hard to do in any field and not just because of ageism.

I'm 51 years old. It's still inspirational. :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com