[rossdavidh]

In Electrical Engineering, which the article often mentions as a counterexample, the 10-year veteran is not nearly as likely to drop out of the profession. Programming has a constant bleed-out of people who learning how to program, became veterans, and then were dismayed to discover that they were going to have to do it all over again, because the libraries, frameworks, languages, etc. were different. Some just do it, but some move into management or out of the field entirely. This happens in engineering as well, but not nearly as often, and it means there is a more nearly constant shortage, I think.

[mattferderer]

In my experience, while there is a new library/framework/language every day, most of them aren't introducing brand new concepts that the developer has to worry about. A lot of the patterns they implement are also common in other language/frameworks. Nothing against React, but every other day someone posts a new concept that is very similar to a pattern that has existed for years.

Edit: I should note, on the last sentence, this may be done by a veteran developer who knows better but is trying to introduce the concept in a new light. It could also just be a developer figuring out a common pattern on their own. I've heard the actor model pattern was developed by several different people at the same time who were unaware of each others work. I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

[seanmcdirmid]

React is interesting. It takes something that we started out with, immediate-mode style UI programming, and brings it to something we have now, retained-mode UI (i.e. the DOM). History in our field loops...a lot.

[tclancy]

I always wonder if some of the veteran drop-out in programming is that improvement (in my lone experience anyway) is couple with/ consists of realizing what else could go wrong. Every step up the ladder of experience affords a better view of how things can fail and that can be hard to deal with. I feel like I keep getting slower as I get older but not simply because of age; some of it is the motivation to sit down and write something that is probably going to come back and bite me in the ass (possibly through no fault of my own) later on down the line. A lifetime of programming means a whole horde of problems to think about at night.

[q845712]

I was just trying to point this out! Though in a more pedagogic setting: I have a very smart coworker who's been out of school for ~1.5 years. He works quickly and tends to create bugs he has to fix later. I got him to contrast his style against our coworker in his 50s who is slower to merge, but the rarely has to fix a bug!

[dhbradshaw]

I think the EE drop out rate may be slower, but from what I see electrical engineers tend to migrate at some point into something that isn't exactly EE. Typically that means systems engineering, management, software, or product management.

[geodel]

You are right. Now thinking about that It seems to me generic Software world seems more comparable to interior designing or fancy restaurants where patrons keep spending because tastes change faster than requirements.

[mcguire]

I don't know. Is it having to learn new things, or is it having to do the same things over and over, with the names changed?

Once you get the principles, there isn't much difference in languages, etc. But if you are a senior developer after 5 years, or 3 years, there isn't much room to go up.

[tonyedgecombe]

I'm not sure they all have a choice, sure you can learn new frameworks or technologies but without real experience it's difficult to demonstrate competence in them. How many employers would hire a Cobol programmer who learnt Angular in their spare time?