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Comment by softbuilder | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the Eddie Izzard bit about Europe vs. America and how Americans will make a big deal about something restored to the way it was "over 50 years ago". GASP "Surely, no one was alive back then!"

"OMG this guy is 65 and still codes?". C'mon. There are a lot of older programmers out there. At least the ones who weren't bullied out by management or peer pressure or killed off by the health effects of sitting at your desk for 40 years.

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I find it hard to believe that there are too many guys above 65 and coding that aren't Fellows or academics.

Not that I believe that they are in anyway incapable, I'm just thinking once you get to 65 or thereabouts, you're probably looking to retire.

I think the other thing is, a 65 year old developer would have started developing around 1970. While there were certainly people developing software back then, it was nowhere near as many as there are today, so the pool of people 65 and up is obviously going to be quite small.

I'm quite hopeful as the people who started during the boom of the 90's age that the pool of older developers will increase and we'll discover that people aren't really 'aged' out of jobs. I love what I do and have zero interest in management or starting my own company, so I hope to stay gainfully employed as a developer at least until 60 (at which point I may decide to work part time or pick up consulting gigs as I tide myself over to my peak social security withdrawls at age 70).

I never plan to retire. I have no family & nothing to look forward to. The day I stop working will be the day I die.

>> I find it hard to believe that there are too many guys above 65 and coding that aren't Fellows or academics.

Being a Fellow or academic sounds to me more like a sentence than a career goal.

Given the benefits you get out of it in certain places, I would surely appreciate it.

It all depends where you work.

Different strokes. Either to me sounds infinitely better than churning out code.

In America you say "elevator", in England we say "lift". In America you say "TV", in England we say "telly". In America you say "'erb", in England we say "herb" because there's a fucking "H" in it.

And yet you say "alf" instead of "half".

Ha. I think it's actually impossible to generalise about British accents because there are too many of them. I definitely pronounce the H in half, though I'll agree that many don't.

The only American pronunciation that stops me in my tracks is "nitch" for 'niche'. Whereas in the UK we'll pronounce it "neesh".

Wow. An example where the British chose the French pronunciation and the US is (a bit spottily) tending to Anglicize a word. I never can think of one when I try.

Thanks for that.

Coupé is my favourite - in the UK it is pronounced the French way whereas in the US it seems to be pronounced as "coop".

"Neesh" is taught as Correct in the US, though it's not universally used.

And "Bri'ish" because replacing a 't' with a glottal stop is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Again, which British. We have more accents than you have states.

we have more accents than we have states too.

Here's the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5H7cgcpkg

In parts of the US we say herb too

I remember seeing a linguistic graph of the US showing how different regions referred to fizzy sweet drinks (here in Australia, that's 'soft drinks'). The predominant usage was 'soda', fair enough, I can see it. Then there was a fair area of 'pop', which sounds cute and archaic to my ears, but fair enough. The confusing one was a swathe of the US south where they're referred to as 'coke', regardless of the actual drink. I remember someone here on HN relating the story of being asked to get some coke, came back with Coke, and being told he got the wrong thing...

The Coca-Cola Company is based in Atlanta, in the South. It's where the drink has existed the longest. Still crazy, but maybe that gives some perspective.

I live in Atlanta. It's no weirder than Xerox to mean photocopier honestly once you've noticed.

The proper exchange is:

"I'll have a coke." "Which kind would you like?"

And somehow that trademark is still not generic.

In the south, you almost always ARE getting a Coke product. Pretty much only at Taco Bell/KFC are you getting a Pepsi product.

Here's the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2PbKpsMRk

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