Comment by jhallenworld | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jhallenworld | Hacker News Reader

This concept that old-people skills are obsolete is a completely modern phenomena, and I'm dubious that it's even true.

The pace of change is fast, but only because we are still dealing with the consequences of the scientific and industrial revolutions. I now think of all technologies past ~1800 as "modern". Basically you should learn all of it to some degree.

19th century machinist skills? Still useful and valid. The basic design of a lathe has not changed since the late 1700s.

COBOL from the 1970s? Nobody is going to throw away so much working code. The first generation of programmers is dying off only now, trust me this stuff is going to be around for a long time. Same deal with C / C++.

Oil burner heating from the 1940s? It's a convenient upgrade from the prior coal technology (much easier to pour oil than bunker coal). Most of the systems installed are still there and running. Diesel fuel / jet fuel / heating oil is still probably the most convenient to use energy source.

A slight change to how web technologies work? Really not a big deal..

AWS? Their servers are still basically IBM PCs.

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but my sense in my own lifetime and in talking to those who went before me that people are increasingly seen in terms of existing certified skills rather than actual skills or abilities. It's as if people are widgets and you need a certified widget to fit in a certain spot in the machine; it's not enough if the widget actually fits but isn't certified as such, and it doesn't matter if it's a free widget producing machine that will produce whatever widgets you want for free from the air around us; it also doesn't matter if these two things are patently true to anyone who will think about it for a second.

Maybe I'm just in a bad spot in my life at the moment but I do think many problems in current society are due to some weird phenomenon where people are seen as unchanging objects, and where abilities can't be inferred even when obvious.

You say "people are increasingly seen in terms of existing certified skills" - now I wonder if that's really true that its more nowadays, and if it is, why... In the 90s employers demanded Microsoft or networking certs. This kinda thing's been going on long time. Some of us unix geeks sidestepped that nasty treadmill, as unix jobs didn't generally require formal quals (albeit some folks commanded a premium with Sun or HP certs). Nowadays you can no longer escape using *nix, for with cloud computing, you're tied to MS/Google/AWS. This may account for the perception (or indeed reality) that certs are required more these days. But as a dev (rather than ops) person you can still dodge it. Personally I think AWS certs are a PITA - lots of effort spent for a piece of paper with a limited shelf life which doesn't necessarily prepare you for the actual tech skills needed in your immediate job. IMHO, as always in the tech industry, one has to spot the fads and treadmills and stand well clear ;)

> Nobody is going to throw away so much working code

But, inexplicably, they're also not going to pay (much) for anybody to maintain it.

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