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Comment by countessa | Hacker News Reader

Unsurprising really - most older programmers I know are fed up with solving the same problems over and over again with whatever the new technology happens to be. After a while, writing what amounts to CRUD by and large is pretty dull.

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I'm an "older" programmer and I love doing basic CRUD for work. Largely because it can pay very well, is reasonably hard to get wrong (= happy management = renewed contracts = happy me) and takes very little of my limited brain power.

If I want risky projects that might be spectacular failures, I'll do them in my spare time -- I really don't want those in front of the people signing my pay cheques...

When you are young, you can make risky bets with your retirement investments; not so much when you are older when you should be preferring safer bets instead.

I would think that the same is true with career management, especially after you 30 something and have a family to worry about.

But to be honest, the amount of age discrimination in our industry has me really scared about getting older.

"Especially after you 30 something" Ouch! That's not old! :) (am i old - oh noes!)

Bloody hell, if 30 is old, there's a glue factory looming in my immediate future.

I think the "having a family" part is more important in than being 30+, though the two events are often correlated.

Bada bing - That's where things get serious. You can go play with the startups, but once you have a family to support, whether you're 28 or 48, you need to do what needs to be done, whether it's your favorite or not. Luckily for me, I have the opportunity to still program and not be stuck in management, but there are many that didn't have that choice to keep a steady paycheck.

"Older" programmer here (I'm 46). I disagree. We're not solving the same problem over and over (at least not where I've been working). It's the opposite - once you've solved a problem with code, you can reuse it. Sure, it doesn't work out perfectly, but for the most part, it's new stuff.

I've been programming for > 20 years, and I still love what I'm doing. A big part of that is being able to create new things every day. Fred Brooks wrote very eloquently about "The Joys of the Craft" in the book "The Mythical Man-Month". My comments/take on it: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-coding/

55 here, writing iOS apps currently and still enjoying it. I still maintain a programming blog and continue to learn new stuff at a faster pace than I did when I started. Everything I do is something new.

You should link to your blog in your HN profile. Always fun to check out what the HN commenters are up to.

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