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by adenozine
1320 days ago
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Unpopular opinion: I think greenfield development is a young man’s game, but there’s plenty of maintenance and carryover work for those in the older brackets. The big 60 is sneaking up on me and I’ve spent probably 80% of my working hours the past couple years looking after codebases that already existed. I sometimes lead teams on new projects, though they’re analytical in nature and I only need worry about correctness and basic lints for style and smell. If you’re worrying about being a “top programmer” then perhaps there’s something else that’s really on your mind. I’ve met some people who bill for a days work what I bill for a week, and they didn’t write code very much differently than I do. Those prodigies are naturally gifted with strong systemic thinking and design and are mathematically bent. Work on your people skills, build a team that is motivated and wants to charge forward with you, and then with their help you will obliterate the obstacles in your path. |
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Most of my work, these days (and for the last decade), has been “greenfield.” I think that new designs benefit greatly from an experienced hand.
Much of my work remains fairly static, with occasional updates to stay relevant (I retire stuff that I no longer want to maintain), as I do tend to get it right, early in the development cycle, and the stuff that has taken off, has been farmed out to larger (younger) teams, who do a marvelous job of maintaining and extending my original work.