Resources for older developers?

In my 20s I worried about losing my intellectual abilities in my 40s and 50s

What you really just lose is patience for BS :)

Sure, yeah, you lose 10% of your raw intellect if you stay healthy[1]. You probably more than make up for it in experience and wisdom. But hell the thing that demotivates me is the recycled insanity of large organizations, egotistical tech executives, hype cycles, and all the other BS. Eventually you can learn to laugh it off, but you don't take it as seriously as you did when you're younger. It motivates you less. You stay focused on what interests you outside of whatever external factors happen.

For some, of course though, this just leads to burnout on the whole field. Seeing one dumb hype cycle after another, with self-described visionaries chasing trends, rather than defining them, heartlessly laying off staff, etc, even when profitable. Its enough to drive you crazy if you let it.

1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/

I'm an older (than you!) developer, but I have no special resources related to that. But for what it's worth, here's my experience.

I've found that nothing is really much different being an older developer compared to being a younger one, aside from two things: I have a lower tolerance for bullshit, and I have a much better handle on what my time is actually worth to employers.

While ageism is certainly a thing that has to be taken into account, I personally haven't found that the problem is unmanageable. I handle it by ensuring that my skillset is up-to-date (same as we have to do throughout our careers anyway), and by recognizing that certain parts of our industry will never welcome older developers. I don't bother with those companies, but they are a minority limited to certain cultural "islands". I am certain that I have been passed over with certain jobs because of my age, but nonetheless have never had difficulty finding good jobs that pay what I'm worth.

I also have developed a standard comeback when younger devs make disparaging comments about my age: "take a good look at me, because you will be me sooner than you think".

I know it's not a contest, but I just turned 65. I'm currently an individual contributor at a small-ish SaaS company.

I've been a systems programmer, software development director at a well-known retailer, consultant, and (mostly) an entrepreneur who started four companies.

I still LOVE to code. Nothing like the satisfaction, though I enjoyed all the other things I did too.

Ageism is real in our industry. Note the comments below from 30-somethings who are worried their careers are over! Honestly, I'm pretty up-to-date with skills and knowledge. Plus I have so much experience, I know what works and what doesn't work, in the meta sense (architectures, organizations, etc.).

I recently even took on a side gig with a start-up. At our ages, you have to know someone who knows you and knows you'll be good. The good news is that, at our age, we know lots of people.

I'm a developer in my late 40's. Just like a LOT of other developers, I have a stackoverflow profile, a set of (active) personal Github repos, and a presence on LinkedIn.

I love clear, to-the-point video instruction. I don't think it's age-specific, but I really like "Tech World with Nana" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TechWorldwithNana

Hacker News (this site) is where I follow industry trends, along with Ars Technica, and TechCrunch. Again -- nothing out of the ordinary.

What might be unusual to younger devs is that I really enjoy mentoring. It reminds me why I got into this business, and sharpens my communication skills. I would encourage any senior dev or manager to seek out mentors to work with.

Oh! And don't be afraid to pick up hobbies. I picked up guitar, camping, and weight training in my 40's. You're never too old to learn something -- it starts with a choice.

I just turned 50 in October, and have been coding my entire career plus. I still love and enjoy coding, and feel like I have more to contribute by far than I did early in my career. I have founded a smallish dev studio in Cincinnati (Launch Scout) that I started with a few other developers in 2009. I've tried a few different roles as the company has evolved, but eventually realized that I love coding and helping other people get better at coding. Management, organization leadership, etc, are all important but I've had to (with some misgivings at times) allow other people to fill those roles so I can do what I'm really best at. It can be very frustrating to see our industry fail to learn sometimes. I think the lack of TDD being as widely adopted, and the wide embrace of technologies like React that make development incredibly more complex than is necessary are my two big sources of frustration right now. But I still love learning, and love seeing new ways to make things much better. I still love building things. I'm inspired when I remember how my good friend Jim Weirich was actively coding and teaching right up until he passed away. Right now, my hope is to follow in his footsteps. I think there are a few of us who are like minded. A few years back I tried to organize a group I called Geek Geezer Guild. It might be time to resurrect that.

Gerald Weinberg formed a community of consultants that continues after his passing. They post and work in various places, but you might look up one or more of Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby, Don Gray, and George Dinwiddie. They've all had long enough careers that they, like Jerry, have taken on helping other lengthen their careers as part of their remit.

The c2 wiki has some of the wisest, oldest, voices in software development, e.g. Michael Feathers, Kent Beck, and the original wiki author, Ward Cunningham. They are all still active in development and it's worth keeping up with what they have to say.

I am 53 and remain an individual contributor and code about 50% of my time. The rest of the time is spent in reviews, debugging problems, operations etc. Some thoughts.

1) you have to really enjoy crafting code, and building things. then, age wouldnt matter at all, ie, good, well designed and crafted code doesnt respect age.

2) you can look back at all of the things you have built with pride and fondness of a parent looking at their children (cicero said this on old age as well)

3) set the ego aside and focus on the craft.. easier said than done because the young-uns sometimes throw their weight around and that grates

4) with experience, you can see through BS, and poor designs off the bat, ie you have better intuition for systems in general

5) it is likely you have improved EQ which helps with working with others regardless of age

6) you have to enjoy the process of continuous learning which is rather difficult at a later age - but the nature of our work involves rapid change. what helps with age is that we have built models and many a time, the new tech just recycles older ideas and algorithms.

The Ageism present in the Software Development industry, is a sign of its still ever present immaturity.

While in any other field...Who want's their house designed by the youngest, freshly graduated Architect? Who wants to be operated by a Surgeon on it's 2nd heart operation? Who wants the Junior Partner Lawyer supporting them on their court attendance?

What would the Abel prize winners think? https://abelprize.no/winners

Older dev here.

I went from junior dev / 'young hacker' type profile, to a VP and exec level management of SMB class orgs, also did Silicon Valley roles in both eng and management.

My take, by far experience makes you able to solve problems in a way that is basically not possible taking a 'young hacker' approach. I can't say anything about cognitive decline other than forgetting my car keys - when it comes to tech the muscle memory seems to vastly overcome that plus some.

I think what we mistake for age decline often - is time allocation related. I know younger devs working and sleeping at office (and loving it). Where I can't do this due to many factors - kids, family, hobbies, overall a larger desire for non work related time. This explains the majority of 'knowledge gap' I see at work. Domain knowledge, especially if the tech debt variety only gets one so far however. In my experience leveraging experience and judgement far outweighs knowing a flavor of month curly brace language syntax.

The single biggest detriment to techie career progress I see is 'writing the wrong software'. Startups that go nowhere. Projects with no value. Solutions with no problem to solve. The 'slightly pessimistic' bias experience gives when writing software seems to catapult one -way- beyond what's possible otherwise. In fact this same bias I think is what enables engineers more experienced to drive up productivity of entire teams/orgs/corporations even.

This reminds me of the old joke about a very expensive consultant after fixing machine with one hit of a hammer. "My price includes 1% cost to swinging hammer, 99% to knowing where to hit."

Older developer here (I started my career by writing 3D graphics software in the mid-80's).

I recently spent a number of years in semi-retirement, concentrating on my photography [0] and filmmaking [1] and thinking I was done with (and too old for) software development.

Professional software development had lost its lure for me as the CG and VFX industry had grown into a massive factory-like industry. Though I had worked on some satisfying projects -- writing the animation code used in "Jurassic Park", leading the R&D team for "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", working on "The Hobbit" movies -- I had lost the desire to write software.

Then about a year ago a friend asked me to teach him some Common Lisp online. So I wrote some tutorials and as we did our sessions [2] I got increasingly enthusiastic about developing for fun, especially if I could use the tool of my choice (Common Lisp) for the domain of my choice (computer graphics). So I started a new 3D graphics project and made it open source [3]. Even started a blog about the journey [4].

Although I don't consider myself to be up on the latest buzzwords and web architectures and the only scrum I'm familiar with is from my rugby-playing days, I have found -- rediscovered -- the pleasure of designing and implementing software. Surprisingly (to me at least), I don't feel over the hill. Yes, I probably can't do the marathon programming sessions I used to do, and all-nighters are a thing of the past, but I don't find my mind being any less sharp than it used to be.

[0] https://www.kardanphotography.com

[1] https://vimeo.com/kavehkardan

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTA6M4yZF0MzsMlNL0N67...

[3] https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9

[4] https://medium.com/@kaveh808/once-more-into-the-breach-a-new...

If one exists, I'd love to be part of it. Many of these comments really resonate with me (in my 40s as well). I find that I'm more effective as a developer now than I was years ago – partly because I know myself better. I understand that I love building things hands-on while collaborating with other engineers, designers or stakeholders. I understand that, in the end, people are using these products we build and that I need to keep that in mind.

I also know the things that I either do not enjoy or am not good at, like management. I'm happy to keep coding for as long as my brain will allow it.

I'd say IRC still using it since the 90s from Blender, the times where Php was hot, Javascript, nowadays mostly Rust and Bash. Of course I have no idea how old other people are, but considering the "nicknames" I see online for more then a decade or two, its very likely that some people are about my age if not more.

Check https://libera.chat/

I have to confess that I've been more conscious about my age, for the first time ever. I am 40 years old and a couple weeks ago, during a bank holiday in the UK, sunny and nice, took my skateboard to attempt a board slide in a grind rail on a ramp angled down. My first few attempts were almost there, I was tired and thirsty but decided to give it another go and injured my knee (not yet clear what it is), but I'm a bit worried that it might be serious and that this might have been the last big trick attempt on my skateboard. I've also started Muay Thai about a year ago and was planning to fight in the next few months.

Some of my colleagues at work are as young as 17 and the oldest about 31 :D

I've seen the internet in the early days.

Feel like I'm more knowledgable but only when hot in a certain topic, which might be anything during a certain period or project duration. But think it always been like that. In case of looking for work, usually take some time to study the stack of the company but this takes a lot of effort and time and people seem to not have empathy and find that most are time wasters.

I've never been the kind of person who goes to conferences or looks for code buddies and stuff, but get some contacts occasionally through my website https://punkbit.com or github account https://github.com/heldrida

To summarise, you can be on IRC and forget about your age :)

Not to be snarky - you’re in one my friend right here. But something I noticed is as I get older there’s less coherent frameworks to grip onto in life. Instead my internal framework is what I have left, and when I trust it enough it is enough. I suspect this is how maturity works on a continuum. Where at one time the world was organized to lift you, at a point no one is there beside you, you’re the one reaching down to lift others up. You are creating the framework because you see where the holes are and where there needs support. As careers end not too far out from us, there’s just no one there reaching down.

I think agism is an interesting thing to dig into. It’s something that after a lifetime of being the youngest person on the team is starting to poke it’s head up. I suspect the answer lies in being picky about who you work with, avoiding the flashy places marketing to fill seats with bodies, and finding the places doing significant and advanced work without glitz. I also suspect remote work evens this field a bit, especially if you grew up in an irc / Usenet / mailing list sort of dev framework as I did.

I am not sure older dev need a specific type of resource to learn new language or skills...

I'm 63 and have been "working with computers" since the mid 70s or so. It's been a great ride and it's not quite over yet.

As to your specific question, perhaps you'd be interested in maintaining some existing open source projects whose mission speaks to you. If you can contribute and bring more value than pain in working with you, I'd expect they would come to welcome your help.

As regards the negatives and imagined negatives of being an older developer, I have to say that they just don't have any sting with me. Nothing has any sting with me anymore.

I am an old 60+yo fart still happily coding - I design and develop software products for clients and for my own company. Maybe I am an exception but I've never felt that I need anything specific for my age. I also am quite comfy with young developers when need to interact / collaborate.

I'm early 40s. I can't think of any specific communities for 50+, or even 40+.

There's the subreddit /r/ExperiencedDevs, but that's less social and more Q and A.

It might be worth checking into Discord servers to see if there are any that cater to more experienced devs. If you find one, let me know.

Have you considered trying to organize such a group? Set up discord, invite your friends you know, ask them to invite their friends of a similar age, then share it on HN to make it a little more global :)

I'm 69 years old and I started coding in earnest 6 years ago. Love doing it. Last year I retired from my day job and I've been coding everyday for 6 or 7 hours on personal projects. I find my mind has become sharper and really good at problem solving. The only issue I have with coding is it's somewhat of a solitary existence. If I had taken up golf I would have buddies to play golf with. With coding I sit in front of my Mac for 6 or 7 hours, and I have no one my age to talk about coding with.

Strategies for dealing with ageism would be useful indeed. But otherwise, besides knowing shortcuts to increase zoom/font size for changing eyesight, age brings no special needs.

I found the best resource for myself is Anders Ericsson's The Road To Excellence. The biggest problem I keep finding throughout my own career is I keep losing sight of where I need to focus to push my game forwards. Most of the online resources are aimed at the overcrowded beginner and mid-level end of software development, so after a certain point, you're writing your own syllabus to advance. Or you can just go broad, which I think is pointless. Ericsson highlights deliberate practice, the idea of finding your discomfort zone, where it most matters. I think there is a lot more to it than he writes in the book, but it's a good introduction on the topic.

The thing about ageism is just a simple matter of interests. It's reasonable to think managers and teams are looking for the best talent, but it's more like the game show Survivor in that people are looking for talent only up to a point, people need to feel your talent isn't going to expose their weaknesses. So as you get better past a certain point, it really gets worse for you trying to break into new groups.

I'm younger than most of the folks commenting here, but I've noticed very clearly that my eyes aren't nearly as strong as they used to be. I'm wondering how older folks deal with this beyond just wearing glasses.

Additionally, some other things I'd like to learn about: Any subreddits geared for older developers? Any supplements that are great for older engineers/knowledge workers?

I am 40+ and came to the realization that I don't want to work for a big company ever again.

So, I am building a different kind of company. Currently, it's all pi in the sky with respect to revenue. I'm changing that soon.

I am close to your age range. I have 22 years of C#, 27 years of HTML/JS/CSS, and I am still coding.

I took this job as a remote IC with a very small team of senior devs who could help them replace their old, highly complex but aging system. From scratch. I am lead on large portions of it and I contribute a lot of code on all sides.

I often find myself with the "get off my lawn!" attitude when I see a lot of the new stuff. When SPAs came along I thought it was crazy. Now I'm lead on an Angular project with C# APIs.

I haven't run into ageism yet but that has mostly come down to having this much experience. Hopefully, companies will hire based on who can understand all of this complexity and get the job done, not how old you are. In that case, it's a benefit.

I want to code. That's what I enjoy. I never wanted to manage. So far, so good.

I don't have any resources to provide to link up with other developers our age. But they are out there. For example, on HN, since I am one :)

I suppose Senior developers, my self included, enjoy fast paces straight to the point learning resources. One of my favorite websites is https://egghead.io/ but some people do complain about behind a bit too fast. Overall, there is heaps of great tutorial on youtube.

If you're looking for an online community mostly you'll be facing many people who are learning how to code. I would choose a specific software and look for paid/free courses that have a community on slack/discord. Regardless of your age, sometimes changing the company you work with can help a lot because you'll on the hunt for other companies using modern stacks. You could also try to convince your company to adopt new tech. Do not be afraid to join younger communities, there days people don't really care about your age as long as you have things in common and a beginner spirit.

The tech landscape is infinitely wide at this point. Are you looking to up-skill in your current area or a new area? For me, I always look to younger people. They are always the future for a fast moving industry. In particular, I grew up in the era when you bought huge 500 page books to learn about new technology. In large part, that is dead. You can learn most things online, but not as deep.

Is it possible to mentor young people outside your team? (I say outside your team specifically to avoid manager-worker conflicts.) It is a real eye-opener to spend time with young people. Just watching the way they learn can teach an old dog new tricks.

Last: Is there something on Reddit? If not, how about starting it? I am sure there are lots of devs in their 50s+ looking for somewhere to congregate online.

Speaking only for myself, I tend to stagnate in a job that doesn’t embrace new tech or allow for much experimentation. I guess I’d ask what your goal is. You could stay relevant as a Java developer indefinitely. You might struggle if you’re still building web apps in Perl.

I was the youngest engineer (by quite a bit ~ 10 years) in my team for a good decade. Which in hindsight I probably should have left earlier than I did. But from that experience what I did notice is that there were two types of older engineers. Those that continued to WANT to learn new things and those that were intellectually lazy and essentially said, "We've never done that before." Well the intellectually lazy all got laid off over time. The guys who wanted to learn new things generally kept finding ways to stay relevant and add value to the organization. I think it's simple as just - never stop learning!

If someone is interested, I just created a discord server for older devs, no agenda other than a place to chat. https://discord.gg/evhUwmYd

I'm in my 50s. I can't think of any category or dimension of tech resources that would more or less valuable for me in my 50s than they would be if I were in my 30s.

Advice on exercise and eating responsibly might be the category (that you probably didn't have in mind) that would be different. Twenty years ago, I could play a softball doubleheader and hit the pub for a dinner of wings and several beers and be fine the next day. Now, a single game and a single beer is enough to have me a few steps slower the next day. Take care of your health (probably in your 30s as well, but especially as you get older).

I've been programming since 1968. I'm still pretty good, just not as fast. I feel that I was at my best in my late 40s. My decline from that was very slow.

Maybe an online group like a Discord or irc for like minded people to hang out?

Talking with people with similar level of experience and knowledge definitely is amazing. I used to spend time with a few ex-colleagues from time to time. We had amazing discussions since we knew each others’ experience and level of intellect. I went to other meetups and it’s difficult to find people of similar background and experience.

55 here developing since 13. Recently dropped lead from my role and just became a developer again. I gained so much joy from not having to deal with most of the company stuff and just concentrating on the things I truly enjoy: creating, designing, troubleshooting, teaching, learning. I burnt out trying to do that and being the communication window through which the company and my team worked. As long as you forever enjoy learning (oddly enough which you do through continually learning), you can stay current enough. If you keep somewhat current, have a strong work ethic and continually contribute to both your team and your company and make a good relationship with your manager (sadly, very important to happiness, stress, success & growth in your current company), you'll avoid a lot of ageism. And the older you get, the more important it becomes to stay healthy in order to keep your brain working as well as it can.

I am 47 and I am the best I have ever been. I might code slower than people 20 years younger than me but I produce much much better code than they do.

There is definitely ageism out there. What you don't get in velocity, I make up in quality.

Also, I think I am wise enough to know that I know nothing and there is still a heck of a lot to learn!

I love to code, but at 55 and still having a teenager to send to college, I can make more $$ as a project manager/architect. So I don't get to code as much professionally - just watch other people do it...

I'm not even sure I could pick up a job with 100% coding at 55+.

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| Community |

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To the people in this thread looking for a community for older developers and software engineers.

We have been setting up the groundwork to organize a cohesive community of programmers on this, for the past few weeks, and will send out invites in the later part of May.

Invites will be sent out on a FIFO basis, to grow the community at a good pace to ensure the community culture will be useful to participants.

If you want to be included for the invite, send us an email at this public address:

resourceToOlder (at) goodage (dot) 33mail (dot) com

Feel free to include any thoughts or comments you have in the email you send to us.

We will also update this YC user profile at the end of May to provide more information to everyone.

Same resources available to anyone else, Stack Overflow, Reddit, HN, Github...

Ageism is a reality, particularly in the US, but IMO it is gradually fading out as the stereotypical generation of piped piper style developers from the early-mid 2000s approach 40-50, many still in purely technical roles producing code better than ever.

Also with the arrival of tools like ChatGPT and Copilot experience will become a much more valuable commodity than the ability to spit out code very fast or in large volumes by pulling out allnighters, something older developers with social and family commitments usually aren't able to do.

This of course assuming you start using such tools.

What are your options for local Meetups? The tech focused Meetups in my area have a good turn out of people with a wide variety of experience. You have a good chance of meeting people who are approximately same age and experience level as you.

I started my own 1-man software company at 39 and am still at it aged 57 with 3 products. I still get to write code and I don't have any ageism to contend with. It comes with it's own challenges though.

I'm 64 and in a senior developer role. I don't think resources are age specific. Their relevance is based on what level of experience you have, i.e. junior, senior, etc, what kind of development you do, front-end, backend, etc, what industry you work in and what kind of future work you are interested in. A community would be nice. I can share that I don't have the energy and endurance I used to have. Working long hours for a deadline has a higher personal cost. I'm not as quick but I have good judgement and I have more patience.

People are diverse and I feel that tech, in the whole, is coming around to that reality in practice and not only in PR. I work in big tech on “cool projects”. Our particular area values experience and intelligently failing fast, which also takes experience. My early career was in the military and I didn’t start working in engineering until my early 30s. Now I’m pushing mid-40s. In a certain way, I got to skip alot of years as a Junior dev and transition right into architect and design roles.

Just turned 50, moved countries to Sydney. Send 3 CV’s and all bounced. Yet the 20-something boss I currently have (and who is brilliant) moves mountains to try keep me. I don’t code a lot (mostly architecture) but I reduce technical risk and add value in a very wide area. And the most interesting and valuable work I’ve done has been the last couple years.

That’s okay, I get it. Older guy and it’s hitting HR and they have checkboxen. I’ll figure it out.

Did you ever get into doing Flash programming, and think it was good?

If so, then the Ruffle project is probably worth keeping an eye on:

https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle

Unlike the several previous Open Source "Flash player" projects that didn't really go anywhere, this one works and is very actively developed. :)

The open source community has been that for me. Just wish I had more time to engage in it, especially face to face.

I worked in management from 25 and returned to an individual contributor development role at 43. There are lots of resources for developers, although not sure any of them are focused on the fact my age is a little greater than the average age individual developer.

One month ago I phoned the best data warehouse developer I've ever met because I wanted to hire him. Turns out he's 62 - and he plans to stay in the company he works until he retires.

I should have kidnaped and cloned him when I had the chance.

What PG said: solve hard problems. Since you don't need the money, make it OSS.

I'm 64 and in a senior dev role. I'm not sure what you mean by resources. Resources for keeping up with and improving at coding vary by what stage of developer you are at, i.e. junior, mid-levead l senior,

By the way, if you want to have a general, but direct understanding of geriatric issues--almost every city has a nursing home or meals on wheels program and might welcome your contribution as a volunteer.

I find quite useful be part of tech communities where you can find inspiration from other professionals. Attending conferences, meetups, online communities, etc.

I've always imagined most of this site was 35+, but perhaps I'm wrong on that? I know it definitely skews older than Reddit, Blind, etc.

Why would resources for older developers be any different from resources for younger developer ?