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Comment by rufus_foreman | Hacker News Reader

>> What I mean is, I’m 46. I’m not 96 and done. I have at least twenty more years of this left, and maybe fifty years

No. Sadly no. This is not the way it works.

I'd say 50 is a little bit optimistic but if you're in your 40s you certainly have a few decades of hacking left if that's what you want to do. Nobody there to stop you.

Age is there to stop you, in two ways. First in raw ability, you hit 50, it's leaving.

And then in the motivation, I remember this Tom Waits song, "The higher the monkey can climb, the more it shows its tail".

I'm old. I don't have to fucking lie anymore.

>you hit 50, it's leaving

Your average working programmer isn't retiring at 50, and your brain works just fine at that age. Is this some Silicon Valley cult of youth thing? At my boring old German company I'd say a third of the devs is over 50 or close to it, they're gonna work till retirement like everyone else and they write good code. Hell, you're still physically fit at that age if you take care of yourself. You may not be able to pull five all-nighters in a row, but you're not decrepit just yet lol.

Btw John Carmack is 52 already and the man seems to have the energy of an entire engineering team. I think some people really let age get to their own head.

>> Your average working programmer isn't retiring at 50, and your brain works just fine at that age

I'm 50 and my brain does not work fine at this age.

>> they're gonna work till retirement like everyone else

50 is retirement. I'm still writing code, but no. I'm ready to retire, this is a victory lap. This is why you save money if you're a coder. You won't listen to me if you're a young me, but I'm telling you, young me, save your money. This is the old you talking directly to the young you. But you won't listen.

Barrin92 might still be able to hit it out of the park at age 50, I can't. I'm hanging on.

Speak for yourself, mate. I'm 62 and just getting going after 22 years of programming. Now learning Kotlin, Swift and Go while developing my own app for mobile and web. Age is a state of mind so long is you keep minimally physically active. I discovered recently, whilst dieting, that eating once a day improves mental clarity and energy. Try it.

>> Speak for yourself, mate

That's exactly who I am speaking for, mate.

You started this thread by telling the OP that "I have at least twenty more years of this left, and maybe fifty years" was "not the way it works".

I'm 52 was a professional programmer for 20 years and an SWE 10 of them, up until this year and was glad to get out. Over time I wound up carrying more and more responsibilities, I was a team lead and owned bigger and bigger projects so I was getting tired from the constant pressure which made coding harder. I changed jobs. I'm at Apple doing internal developer support for an internal API. Work's easier, still get a SWE salary, and the new job's actually pretty fun. Worth seeing what kinds of other opportunities are out there, you don't have to be a code-monkey forever.

But that's like the best job available in all of this.

Code monkey might be bad, but everything else is worse. I can't think of anything else, maybe there's something, but for a job easily attainable by someone with no connections whatsoever code monkey is pretty damn good.

Code monkeying has been very very good to me.

I think it just depends on the person. I just LEARNED how to code a year ago, and I’m 46.

I’m looking forward to many years of coding, I find it to be enjoyable and challenging. One big thing though, I only code for fun and only on my own projects. I could see how coding for a big company would not motivate me at this age.

> You won't listen to me if you're a young me, but I'm telling you, young me, save your money.

I really don't wanna wait til I'm 50 to start enjoying life. My body will be too tired by then. Anyway, nobody knows if I'll even be able to retire then - what's the next crisis? Maybe my money won't be worth shit, maybe I could own the house by then but no money to stop working... I'm not gambling on my younger years, old man.

Gotta get into the nootropics and Vyvanse like the kids then.

Though I think weightlifting turns out to work better than almost all of them. And checking if you have sleep apnea.

If you don't feel you can program anymore, then you can move into management, UX, or analytics.

That's what I plan to do, I'm not 50 yet but I am starting to feel tired of programming, or at least the kind of programming I do at work.

I am starting to move into management and focus on people both our developers and our users. Going that route also pays better if that is important to you. So there are many options even at 50 and beyond.

>> If you don't feel you can program anymore, then you can move into management, UX, or analytics

I would rather die. I write code for a living. If I can't do that, welfare.

Management. UX. As if.

If your brain doesn’t work fine at 50, you either have a disease or you haven’t taken care of yourself.

Today I learned.

I think you speak for a small minority.

I'm 60. I've been doing this since I was a kid hacking into VAX clusers. My motivation is as strong if not stronger than when I was in my 20s (despite doing four startups which were successful). As for raw ability... claiming that is declining is not something that anyone can prove or disprove. It's just your opinion. But more importantly, it's not relevant. Raw ability is talent, and what matter is the APPLICATION of that talent. Speaking from my advanced age... one of the great things about maturing is that you become far, far better at applying your talents.

So if you are over 50, I'm sorry you feel this way. For the rest of us, this sh*t really does get better with age.

I get more done, more quickly, and more better, than I ever have, in my life.

God, I love writing software, and I’m thrilled at the new tools and platforms.

What do you mean by that?

I am also 46, and it's easy to imagine doing this for another 20 years. I'm not sure what else I would do.

I turned 60 this year, and still program for fun. I started at 11 - it's a lifelong habit at this point, like reading before going to sleep. I don't think that I'll stop any time soon.

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