5 ms·

>Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? Yes, absolu

by ArcMex 3y ago

>Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? Yes, absolutely!

newswasboring 3y ago
I've reached a age where I have to answer "define young". Early thirties is weird. All the people I respect and learn from are still older than me, but not old old.
- ZaoLahma 3y ago
  The "define young"-range seems to be a sliding window centered around your current age. Perhaps at some point there will be very few older than you and perhaps then the sliding window will be offset accordingly, but at least for me (almost, almost 40) I'm still well within the "define young" range from my own point of view.
- vjk800 3y ago
  Hey, 30s is the new 20s, and so on. I'm in the same boat and I definitely still feel young. I mean, I'm fundamentally unchanged from when I was 16, and still like the same stuff like video games, computers, and so on. I have also always looked kinda young, which probably allowed me to propagate my youth until very recently. The biggest change I've noticed is not anything internal to me but how other people act around me; they talk to me like I'm an adult (which can be either good or bad depending on the situation), and the cashiers at the stores have stopped asking for an ID when I buy liquor (before 30 they still did!). Also, people don't give unsolicited advice as much as they used to; I suppose they think I know what I'm doing or don't care. This is definitely bad, because my modus operandi for life has always been to try weird stuff my own way and count on other people to stop me if I'm doing something completely stupid.
- qup 3y ago
  I'm older than you and I actually considered that the author was talking about me! I thought "yeah, I'm an addict, we're still out there". It didn't occur to me that I was old until your comment. Thanks!
tombert 3y ago
I have no idea if I am considered "young" (32), but I taught a few classes over the last few semesters to students who were unambiguously young, and I can definitely say that young people coding for fun are definitely out there. A few students of mine would show me little games they were working on, or websites they were building. Sure, they might be doing this a bit for resume-fuel, but it was abundantly obvious to me that they were doing these things largely because they thought it was cool. And you know what? It is cool! I tried my best to encourage them to keep at it.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  The "it's for the resume" is a convenient excuse when people ask you why are you spending hundreds of hours on something that seems pointless but is fun to code.
  - vulcan01 3y ago
    Anecdotally true: when my non-technically-inclined parents ask me why I'm working on my personal projects, I vaguely mumble something about "it'll be good for my resume" and try to change the topic. I definitely do not think these will benefit my resume in any way.
  - franciscop 3y ago
    Yeah exactly when "normal" people ask me why I contribute to open source now I tend to mumble something like that, career professional development blabla. When I was at university I would say something like "learning/practice programming", though back then most of my classmates spent their time playing LOL/DOTA/etc, so if I wanted to program for fun no one would care really.
Hunpeter 3y ago
I'm 26 (so, born around the time author started at Apple) and took up programming as an on-and-off hobby in my early twenties. I've never worked in IT in any capacity and don't consider myself skilled or talented. But I love the thrill of figuring things out, of building (usually useless) things, of solving problems. I suspect there could be many like me, who perhaps never get into (or even try to get into) the industry, yet are enthusiastic about the field itself.
mhh__ 3y ago
To even ask is ridiculous.
- potatoboiler 3y ago
  As a current undergraduate, programming for fun is ubiquitous in my peers. Surprises me also that the author has to ask.
  - tombert 3y ago
    In a bit of fairness, I know a lot of very competent engineers who do not code for fun at all. Programming is purely a job for them, and then they go home and hack on nothing. There's honestly nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly valid to do something purely for the pay (so long as what you're doing is ethical, obviously). I suspect there are plenty of young people who see the bloated salaries that software engineers get and decide to learn programming for purely economic reasons. This probably contrasts somewhat to the 80's and 90's, where it was substantially more difficult to "get into" computers, and as a result there was a strong selection bias towards really passionate people.
    - dolmen 3y ago
      As someone who studied programming in the 90's, I can tell you that I was surprised about how many students were not passionated like myself. And this was already before the wave of scientist coming from other fields (physics, chemistry, biology) to computing in early 2000s.
    - digging 3y ago
      I struggle a lot with my hobbies because I do almost no coding or learning about code in my free time, at least not directly. I think I could be a great(ish) programmer if I did programming as a hobby, but there's just so many other interesting and worthwhile things to do. I get a lot of FOMO from people who code as a hobby, and I think it doesn't help that they don't seem to get FOMO about my hobbies. But I know I will always feel something is missing if I don't spend time marveling at the natural world and creating art, so I guess I'm stuck.

by ArcMex 3y ago

>Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? Yes, absolutely!

newswasboring 3y ago

I've reached a age where I have to answer "define young". Early thirties is weird. All the people I respect and learn from are still older than me, but not old old.

ZaoLahma 3y ago
The "define young"-range seems to be a sliding window centered around your current age. Perhaps at some point there will be very few older than you and perhaps then the sliding window will be offset accordingly, but at least for me (almost, almost 40) I'm still well within the "define young" range from my own point of view.
vjk800 3y ago
Hey, 30s is the new 20s, and so on. I'm in the same boat and I definitely still feel young. I mean, I'm fundamentally unchanged from when I was 16, and still like the same stuff like video games, computers, and so on. I have also always looked kinda young, which probably allowed me to propagate my youth until very recently. The biggest change I've noticed is not anything internal to me but how other people act around me; they talk to me like I'm an adult (which can be either good or bad depending on the situation), and the cashiers at the stores have stopped asking for an ID when I buy liquor (before 30 they still did!). Also, people don't give unsolicited advice as much as they used to; I suppose they think I know what I'm doing or don't care. This is definitely bad, because my modus operandi for life has always been to try weird stuff my own way and count on other people to stop me if I'm doing something completely stupid.
qup 3y ago
I'm older than you and I actually considered that the author was talking about me! I thought "yeah, I'm an addict, we're still out there". It didn't occur to me that I was old until your comment. Thanks!

tombert 3y ago

I have no idea if I am considered "young" (32), but I taught a few classes over the last few semesters to students who were unambiguously young, and I can definitely say that young people coding for fun are definitely out there. A few students of mine would show me little games they were working on, or websites they were building. Sure, they might be doing this a bit for resume-fuel, but it was abundantly obvious to me that they were doing these things largely because they thought it was cool. And you know what? It is cool! I tried my best to encourage them to keep at it.

moffkalast 3y ago
The "it's for the resume" is a convenient excuse when people ask you why are you spending hundreds of hours on something that seems pointless but is fun to code.
- vulcan01 3y ago
  Anecdotally true: when my non-technically-inclined parents ask me why I'm working on my personal projects, I vaguely mumble something about "it'll be good for my resume" and try to change the topic. I definitely do not think these will benefit my resume in any way.
- franciscop 3y ago
  Yeah exactly when "normal" people ask me why I contribute to open source now I tend to mumble something like that, career professional development blabla. When I was at university I would say something like "learning/practice programming", though back then most of my classmates spent their time playing LOL/DOTA/etc, so if I wanted to program for fun no one would care really.

Hunpeter 3y ago

I'm 26 (so, born around the time author started at Apple) and took up programming as an on-and-off hobby in my early twenties. I've never worked in IT in any capacity and don't consider myself skilled or talented. But I love the thrill of figuring things out, of building (usually useless) things, of solving problems. I suspect there could be many like me, who perhaps never get into (or even try to get into) the industry, yet are enthusiastic about the field itself.

mhh__ 3y ago

To even ask is ridiculous.

potatoboiler 3y ago
As a current undergraduate, programming for fun is ubiquitous in my peers. Surprises me also that the author has to ask.
- tombert 3y ago
  In a bit of fairness, I know a lot of very competent engineers who do not code for fun at all. Programming is purely a job for them, and then they go home and hack on nothing. There's honestly nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly valid to do something purely for the pay (so long as what you're doing is ethical, obviously). I suspect there are plenty of young people who see the bloated salaries that software engineers get and decide to learn programming for purely economic reasons. This probably contrasts somewhat to the 80's and 90's, where it was substantially more difficult to "get into" computers, and as a result there was a strong selection bias towards really passionate people.
  - dolmen 3y ago
    As someone who studied programming in the 90's, I can tell you that I was surprised about how many students were not passionated like myself. And this was already before the wave of scientist coming from other fields (physics, chemistry, biology) to computing in early 2000s.
  - digging 3y ago
    I struggle a lot with my hobbies because I do almost no coding or learning about code in my free time, at least not directly. I think I could be a great(ish) programmer if I did programming as a hobby, but there's just so many other interesting and worthwhile things to do. I get a lot of FOMO from people who code as a hobby, and I think it doesn't help that they don't seem to get FOMO about my hobbies. But I know I will always feel something is missing if I don't spend time marveling at the natural world and creating art, so I guess I'm stuck.