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by strlen
5484 days ago
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I don't disagree with the conclusion: people who aren't as dedicated to or good at programming transition to people or product/program/project management[1]; the remaining folk receive additional experience which allows them to capitalize further on their passion and talent. However, this isn't exactly proven by the data: what Stackoverflow shows is that older developers are better at talking intelligently about programming. That's extremely useful (and helps career wise), but it isn't the same thing as being a better developer. Sometimes it correlates (the best programmers I've known have also participated in organizations like IETF, written RFCs and have also thoroughly documented their work), but it isn't a total ordering (I know plenty of programmers who are better than I, but who don't participate in any public forums). On the other hand, I've yet to find a successful programming language made by someone before their thirties. Contrast it, on the other hand, with some of the most ground changing academic work in Computer Science and Mathematics being done by people in their twenties. [1] There's nothing wrong with that: Google's APM program particularly is a great example of "engineers who don't want to code" being extremely useful. See also "The Russian Lit Major" by rands: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/09/06/russian_his... |
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* Dennis Ritchie was 27 or 28 in 1969 when C got going.
* McCarthy was about 30 in 1958 for Lisp.
* Sussman was 28 and Steele was 21 in 1975 for Scheme.
* Alan Kay made Smalltalk between 28 and 31.
And while it used to be true that lots of game-changing mathematics was done early, I don't see much of that lately. A huge amount is done by junior faculty and postdocs, but that's usually late 20s and 30s.