Older programmers have no brains for young programmers

I've had my 40 birthday recently. A friend jokingly said to me: "Hey, I think this means you're old enough to go to programming!" I smiled on the surface, but in my heart it touched a lot. Age discrimination is not funny in our line of work. Just like today's Java brothers came to this point, a few years ago, the use of COBOL guys was a way of laughing at the old coding and the lack of flexibility in new technologies.

Now it's my turn to be laughed at by them. Maybe you do too. If not now, I reckon this day will come soon. Are you going to laugh? Yes, I think it will be the same with me.

Our line of age discrimination is reflected in several ways. Everyone is enthusiastic about the hot new technology, the pursuit of unimaginable speed to grasp the new knowledge of the ability, never tired of overtime, let the product released on time-all these are doing software this line of young people's expertise. I'm not saying that young people are cheap, are they? Not a general bargain. The trend statistics for the computer professional qualifications do not tell you clearly that there is already a serious glut of young and cheap labor, and that the human managers feel like the sea is inexhaustible. In fact, all the data prove a conclusion: in the last 10 years, the requirements for registration of computer professional qualifications are declining or at least not upgraded. If the difference is not too big, at least according to Jeff Atwood data, the talent information repository of talent quality is not as good as before. When you're looking for someone to develop your new project and don't believe in outsourcing, who are you looking for?

If you are considering a development team of only young members, then you need to think about it. In the software industry, some rumors about older software developers are believed by many, and this has put older, experienced people in a disadvantageous position. But these people are really stupid, they seriously refer to this degree trend, refused more than 40 of anyone, because we open up is a bit silly old. Let me debunk the rumors.

Rumor: older programmers are more expensive than young, and younger developers are preferable.

truth: The reason why experienced programmers are priced is that in software companies, employee pay is the number one cost. In this way, being young means cheap. While inexperienced, young programmers can make you lower your budget, if you're on a team, they'll make you pay longer. Young programmers have failed to accept the lessons of failure. nor do they have enough time to learn the lesson. think about who they will learn this lesson on whose projects, and who will suffer the loss? It's you. Don't you have to suffer a loss when you can't finish the project on schedule? Think again.

Yes, older programmers have a higher salary than the young programmers ask for. But have you ever thought about what it takes to get a high salary for them? For experienced programmers, you are actually hiring them to gain experience in previously unsuccessful or successful projects. If you want them to learn these lessons in your manager's tenure, the price is expensive. If you spend money on an experienced programmer, he can make sure that you don't make those classic mistakes in your future project management and software development process. Your annual Review chart will also be much prettier because you hire smart and competent people who know that if you work beautifully.

Rumor: Older programmers lack flexibility and lack the ability to learn new knowledge because of the traditional knowledge in their heads.

truth: On the contrary, due to their experience, the more experienced programmers are able to migrate to new technologies, frameworks and systems more quickly and in depth. For example, if you have studied the GUI framework of C/s + +, your mind will have mastered the concepts of message transmission, event handling, and the MVC pattern uses these concepts to design the system, separating the presentation layer and the backend business processing. When you first learn a GUI framework, you have to learn these conceptual things in addition to learning the grammar, the examples, and the common class libraries. After learning two or three or more GUI frameworks, you'll find that the frameworks are very similar except for syntax. You will also find that after the advent of the framework has overcome many of the unique limitations of predecessors, no longer need you to spend time developing complex hack programs. These insights are not something that new people can have. The productivity gains from these ideas are not something you can measure directly.

Rumor: Older programmers are unwilling to do the hard work of development (Editor's note: Long, overtime work) because they have families and other things that are a drag on young workers.

The truth: I think it's right to say that skilled programmers are less likely to work overtime, because they know that only work-efficiency problems will push themselves to a 80-hour workweek. Some people say that there is no energy, but I would like to ask, which one has had this experience is also eager to experience again? Others say the "family burden" is a factor, but it is only a superficial illusion. High-capacity, experienced software engineers are leeway to manage time, and it is with family that they are more motivated to do the work in the time given. They may need to accompany their families to a ball and watch a football match, but they will also take up the time they spend in their spare time and work wholeheartedly in the standard 40 hours of the week. A good family programmer must be an effective person who manages his or her personal time, or he will immediately drown in all sorts of work.

Rumor: Older programmers don't have the brains of young programmers .

truth: age growth does affect people's brainpower, and it can be tested that older workers do have a slower response than younger ones. But thinking agile is just one aspect of our comparison. It's not always good to think fast. is the judgment correct or not? There's an old saying:

The right judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from wrong judgments.

These older programmers have seen and experienced successful and unsuccessful cases that are much younger than they were, and it can be seen that rejecting older programmers on the pretext of thinking about the speed of degradation is unconvincing. Experienced programmers have a lot of history that can be used as a reference for you to avoid the wrong judgments in the current project. Young programmers may have some good new ideas, but they are usually not tested and validated. If there are two types of programmers in the team, it will be very beneficial.

Rumor: older programmers are so tired and picky about their jobs that they don't have as much motivation as young people in their jobs.

The truth: These words are likely to come from people who are always criticized by experienced programmers as stupid, and these experienced programmers can't stand the folly of making decisions that happen to them once in a while. An experienced programmer can sniff out the wrong smell a mile away. They will never listen to you tell stories about how this product is not accepted by customers in the marketplace because they have been dealing with customers for years and they know you are trying to save your life by lying. They will never tolerate it, because the client asks for a product next month, and the manager asks them to work 80 hours a week, thinking they already know and say it will take at least 3 months to fully fulfill the customer's requirements.

Young programmers do not experience so many of these situations, so they rarely have the action to rebel against the manager's wrong decision. Managers cannot use their naïve ideas to ask for things. If you want to have a good team that produces good products, allowing people to pull you back from the wrong path will save your project again and again. Of course, this is only true if you have the courage to admit your ignorance.

As for the disappearance of enthusiasm, it is hard to tell that the years have passed the passion of man. If it's age, how do you explain Donald Knuth, Ward Cunningham, Bill Joy, Bill Gates and hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the 40-year-old threshold without losing any enthusiasm for the field? they did not lose. Passion is passion. when you were 40 years old, you had a passion, and that's what you really love about the industry.
This kind of love will not disappear overnight. The young ones who are still moving along the footsteps of these predecessors may have a momentary enthusiasm that may falter in the face of difficulties and challenges in the course of their progress.

As a summary, let's clearly see these things: youth is not a bad thing. Old age is not all good. Most importantly, any programmer who has no real goods in his belly should not be employed, young or old. Keep your team members young, old, experienced and inexperienced-keep your team in a variety of teams and make progress. If you're hiring someone, don't ignore the gray-haired people sitting in front of you. If his talents can impress you, then discard the prejudice of age.

Maybe one day this person is you.