[ale] OT where do all the old programmers go.

[DJ-Pfulio]

On 04/12/2015 09:34 AM, Atlanta Geek wrote:
> Im well into my 40s and am finding that I am normally the oldest developer in my
> team. Im not sure how this happened or when this happened (that 7 year stint at
> a company I got too comfortable at was like a time warp.)  I also came across
> this article:
> http://improvingsoftware.com/2009/05/19/programmers-before-you-turn-40-get-a-plan-b/
> 
> So where have all the 90s developers gone.  Cause there was a lot of us.
> 

For me, programming was an entry level job.

I suppose I was slightly above average in skill - still making design mistakes
after a decade.  Out of the 100 of so programmers I've worked with directly over
the years, only 5 or so were true "artists."  So with those numbers as
estimates, 5% are really great and should program for their entire lives. 95%
use it to launch into other careers ... like brew-masters, bicycle shop owners,
and even technical architects.

IME, very few become system admins come from a programming background. The
devops people seem to be more programmers, but didn't learn system
administration, so they make the same old mistakes. But they aren't hampered by
old-school knowledge either.

Perhaps if I'd found a programming job that paid as much as being an architect,
I would have stayed programming? Money can make people change jobs.  After being
a software architect AND coding for a few years, i was moved into a technical
manager role and hated it.  No more coding. Days spent prioritizing features and
bug fixes for my team sucked.  Moved into systems architecture after a job
change and got lots of training on hardware from all the popular vendors.  My
income grew.  Few software jobs pay that kind of money. Very few.

Retired now. Haven't written any C/C++ in about 15 yrs, beyond a few hello-world
things.  I've played with RoR, Python, Perl, bash, Go, even Android-Java.

Still write a little perl - usually on the back-end service side - REST stuff,
but with minimal GUIs too.  Occasionally, I'll hack some small glue together too
- for automation.

For me, programming was an entry level job.  Where have all the old programmers
gone?  Everywhere except to other programming jobs.