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macOS Age of Programmers
- Thread starter Duke Leto
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There are all ages where I work. There's guys in their early 20s fresh from Uni. There's guys in their early 30s who know a scary amount. There's guys in their 40s who all seem to have specialized in some niche platform and become high priced contractors.
Interesting choice of age bands in the poll - looks like it must have been set up by some kid who thinks over 35 is old.
I'm not gonna vote 'cos I'm well past 50 and there isn't an appropriate option (don't lump me in with kids of 46
)
As I look around my office I have two other programmers over 50 and only one under 30 - and he's 30 this year.
Mind you punch card nostalgia is something else - I've got a length of paper tape in my drawer, it is labelled 'mean square successive difference' and is only 2ft 6" long so must be fairly well coded but I can't read it any more...
I'm not gonna vote 'cos I'm well past 50 and there isn't an appropriate option (don't lump me in with kids of 46
)As I look around my office I have two other programmers over 50 and only one under 30 - and he's 30 this year.
Mind you punch card nostalgia is something else - I've got a length of paper tape in my drawer, it is labelled 'mean square successive difference' and is only 2ft 6" long so must be fairly well coded but I can't read it any more...
Which version of BASIC did you start programming with? I wrote my first program in AppleBASIC for the Apple IIgs, at the age of 6. It was a "guess the randomly generated number" program.
Well so far I guess I qualify as the "old man" of this bunch. I am 52, and have been involved with computers since before most of the rest of you were born. Before Apple existed, before IBM came out with their first PC. Before Radio Shack ever dreamed of the TRS-80 [I was one of the first RS employees to SELL a full TRS-80 system]. And a few years after that, sold Apple ][, Apple /// and Lisa computers [well 1 Lisa anyways].
I programmed in FORTRAN and COBOL using punch cards. The first computer I ever used that had a HARD DISK drive, was the size of a washing machine [just the disk drive]... It was dual 14" platters and held a whopping ONE MEGABYTE! [you should have seen the Star-Trek game we managed to write on THAT sucker ]
The first "personal" computer a friend and I had to BUILD [for someone else ], it weighed 150lbs. had 480K of floppy disk [dual 8" drives], 48K of RAM, and consumed 22amps of electrictiy.
I have been a Systems Analyst in the Aerospace industry, and currently in the Healthcare industry, and know [or knew] more computer programming languages than I care to think about.
And for the record.... You are NOT a "programmer" [IMHO] until you are being paid on a regular basis, to design, code and implement computer projects. My opinion, no flames required.
I programmed in FORTRAN and COBOL using punch cards. The first computer I ever used that had a HARD DISK drive, was the size of a washing machine [just the disk drive]... It was dual 14" platters and held a whopping ONE MEGABYTE! [you should have seen the Star-Trek game we managed to write on THAT sucker
]The first "personal" computer a friend and I had to BUILD [for someone else
], it weighed 150lbs. had 480K of floppy disk [dual 8" drives], 48K of RAM, and consumed 22amps of electrictiy.I have been a Systems Analyst in the Aerospace industry, and currently in the Healthcare industry, and know [or knew] more computer programming languages than I care to think about.
And for the record.... You are NOT a "programmer" [IMHO] until you are being paid on a regular basis, to design, code and implement computer projects. My opinion, no flames required.
That's like calling someone ugly, then saying "No offense" as if that will make it better. =) Tossing out flamebait then saying no flames required isn't fair.
You're not a *professional* programmer until you're paid, but there's plenty of people who are hobby programmers who I think should rightly be able to call themselves programmers. People who aren't on the circuit still call themselves golfers.
-Lee
P.S. I am paid to program (and go to meetings, and write documentation, and...), so this wasn't out of self defense.
You're a programmer if you program a computer. No money, degree, or certificate needs to be involved. If you want to call yourself a software engineer/analysis/architect, thats a different story.
As for me I've lived 0x17 years. Started with VisualBasic essentially. However, I really hope I'm not sitting in front of a computer for the next 30 years of my life...
As for me I've lived 0x17 years. Started with VisualBasic essentially. However, I really hope I'm not sitting in front of a computer for the next 30 years of my life...
I'm 34; first programming language was Fortran taken as part of a numerical analysis class in college; Have worked as a professional developer for greater part of the last decade, 90% of it C/C++ (all Unix, never Windows). The rest Perl, Ada, some Java bits, even hateful Fortran.
I never programmed as a kid (never had a computer, never really wanted one, never could afford one anyway), nor did I ever have any special interest in computers even through most of university. I studied (very) pure mathematics as an undergrad and into grad school, so naturally I loved theory (algorithms, complexity, optimization) but found the real substantive, hands-on work to be, well, work. Now I'm older and I know better.
I never programmed as a kid (never had a computer, never really wanted one, never could afford one anyway), nor did I ever have any special interest in computers even through most of university. I studied (very) pure mathematics as an undergrad and into grad school, so naturally I loved theory (algorithms, complexity, optimization) but found the real substantive, hands-on work to be, well, work. Now I'm older and I know better.
Which version of BASIC did you start programming with? I wrote my first program in AppleBASIC for the Apple IIgs, at the age of 6. It was a "guess the randomly generated number" program.
Lets see, I believe I started BASIC on an Apple IIe making games based on Random Numbers (D20 style).
That's like saying to Vincent van Gogh, you're not a real painter unless you get regular pay for painting staircases, bridges etc.
b e n
To cite an example, look at Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lech_Johansen
He was only a clever teen, a dropout at that, when he created the DeCSS DVD decryption engine for which he faced criminal prosecution (he was rightfully acquitted).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lech_Johansen
He was only a clever teen, a dropout at that, when he created the DeCSS DVD decryption engine for which he faced criminal prosecution (he was rightfully acquitted).
Exactly. Some of the best programmers have been in their teens doing it for fun. Saying that your not a real programmer just because you don't get paid is silly.
I'm 39 and have been programming since my mother got us a PET when I was ~13. All I wanted it for was to play games on it. My plan was to copy all the tapes they had at my school. My mother was wiley, though, and got the computer at the start of summer break. Without any games to play, I started to program my own. By the time summer was over, I was more interested in programming computer games than in playing them (and I thought the ones the school had were incredibly lame compared to own anyway).
I seriously doubt you will get a good sample here on MR. I'd expect MR readers to be 20 years below the average in the industry. "46+" is a rather wide range so it appears you must have expected such a bias.
If you looked in the real world many people using the Mac have crossed over not from Windows but from other UNIXes. Those "unix people" tend to be older with many approaching retirement. If you strated your career with UNIX when it was the "hot new thing" you would have been working for almost 40 years. This thing we call Mac OS X has code that dates from the early 1970's still in it. I bump into a lot of these people in the hallways here at work. None of them know about MR.
What is the average age. If you move away from web and adnweb-based applications and look at business and technical enginering the ages move up and are no longer skewed so much to those in their early 20s just out of school. I se the normal distribution of 20s to 60s here with about the same age distribution as for electrical or mechanical enginerrs
Great example. Some of us aren't paid to be programmers because no one wants to pay a 14-16 year old for a job which is considered "hard" for adults. I guarantee you I know more about computers than some Uni students, but they're the ones getting paid, not me. (Interestingly enough I had a half serious job offer a couple months ago to make a web page for a catering company that's run by family friends. I turned it down, web stuff is not really my thing.)
And then of course there's Richard Stallman, FSF holy-man and original author of emacs and GCC, arguably the most important piece of software in the world.
He most definitely does not get paid for any software he has produced.
He most definitely does not get paid for any software he has produced.
I started programming when I was 9 and I also didn't see the difficulty. But now, 20 yrs later with a degree and 10 years commercial experience under my belt I realize there is software and there is software.
Writing an enterprise app that can handle thousands of simultaneous users, back by a database terrabytes in size is not the same as writing a desktop app on OS X in Xcode. It's not just a difference in degree but almost in kind. Nearly every aspect changes. And a lot of smart people can spend many months banging their heads together and still not get it right.
So I wouldn't say that a hobbiest is not a "real" programmer, but just a different kind than a hardened commercial developer.
Writing an enterprise app that can handle thousands of simultaneous users, back by a database terrabytes in size is not the same as writing a desktop app on OS X in Xcode. It's not just a difference in degree but almost in kind. Nearly every aspect changes. And a lot of smart people can spend many months banging their heads together and still not get it right.
So I wouldn't say that a hobbiest is not a "real" programmer, but just a different kind than a hardened commercial developer.
True but commercial programming is not the be all and end all. What about academic programming? Or research based programming which is not directly commercial (Xerox Parc as an example).
Yup, I'm not saying commercial development is the be all and end all, just that there are different types of programming. So to those who wonder why they can program their home computer but not get a job, that might be why.