[thenewwazoo]

Someone here recently pointed out the irony of the term "digital native", which you illustrate nicely. The people who aren't "digital natives" built everything the "digital natives" purport to understand so deeply.

Which knowledge is deeper? That of the user, or that of the builder?

[chillingeffect]

Speaking for myself, there are two trends with aging. One positive, one negative.

1. (positive) Big picture wisdom increases. You learn when to call in help, when to use a library instead of rolling it yourself, when to stop hacking, retreat, document, how long to architect, etc. I get a little frustrated with younger people who e.g. over-optimize some aspect of a system before making the whole thing work adequately. I am waaaaaaay more organized and consistent than the young person who hasn't inherited enough code or faced the spectre of their own code when they forgot how it works.

2. (negative) I often forget how easy some formerly difficult tasks have become. Just take a library like three.js.... or building a compiler from source or using a library instead of writing an XML parser or SDL and so on. To stay on top, I often have to check in with others to see what surprising tools "young people" :) have made. This is critical because it affects estimates of time and resources needed to meet a goal.

So it's excellent to be around for a long time, IMO, as long as you are good at forgetting/unlearning some obsolete ways of doing things.

[wott]

Yeah, I was occasionally told I was outdated, out of touch with technology, and other such qualifiers because I did not own a smartphone.

I've designed some of the bloody devices, for God's sake! I just don't want any because I have no use for them (either because I get the same function another way I do prefer or because I consider the function pointless or harmful). It doesn't mean I don't understand them better than the average candy crusher.