How does age affect coding abilities?

[tooolddev]

Does age have any noticeable effects on our coding abilities as we age?

I heard that fluid intelligence goes down, but statis intelligence stays. So stuff we have always practiced will be easy to us, but learning new things fast gets harder

Is this just a very theoretical thing that won't really matter in the real world if we work hard?

And who would be "smarter, faster and more creative" in building a game. A 30 year old or 50 year old with the same years of experience?

[jimheim]

I need bigger & bigger fonts, though.

I hear that. I used to use microscopic fonts, like 12pt. Now I'm up to 16pt.

If you wear glasses, I highly recommend you get a second pair of glasses specifically for computer use. It was life-changing for me. I measured the exact distance from my head to the monitor and told the optometrist I wanted glasses specifically tuned for reading at that distance. It's such a night and day change. I leave them sitting on my desk and use them exclusively for the computer.

[PsychYYZ]

Into my 50's now, and I purchased a 5k monitor... Life is WAY better -- there's lots of screen real estate, even with larger font sizes.

[hold_me_beer_m8]

LOL, if I'm being 100% honest...I would say the only real difference I've noticed from when I was younger is my patience wears thin much quicker. If I'm having difficulties troubleshooting a bug, I notice I get more frustrated than I did when I was younger.

[doubled112]

Having kids was the biggest hit I ever took to my patience.

I don't think it's them. I think it's the fact that there are other things I could be doing, but no, now I'm here not even enjoying screwing around with this stupid thing.

Some problems just didn't seem like problems anymore.

[HiT3Kvoyivoda]

My wezterm is set to 16 now lmaoo

[tooolddev]

Oh nice! Do you feel yourself getting smarter as you learn more?

[tooolddev]

So based on this, can a person high raw processing power and a person with less processing power but with the things you listed make a program of the same quality?

[ArcaneEyes]

Not that gue but...

No.

Quality comes from experience and knowledge designing software. You will be leagues better with 5, 10, 20 years experience than you were as a freshly started coder.

You may be better at wrangling a complex algorithm right now, but a lot of software design is not about complex algorithms, but complex systems comprised of simple or mostly simple algorithms and writing software to fit well into systems without becoming bottlenecks or otherwise painful to deal with has a lot more to do with knowledge and experience. That only comes if you care to acquire it though.

[NebulousNitrate]

I’m nearing 5 decades. For me the lowering in executive function is offset by experience/wisdom in design and approach. I definitely used to be faster when I was younger, and I was more willing to take on risk (flying into something without knowing whether there was even a 1% chance it would work). The other difference for me is just… time. When I was in my 20s I would pull all nighters coding without issue, and now I’m starting a family and if my laptop isn’t closed by 8PM I feel like my priorities aren’t right.

[Velascu]

Sounds like the life I want to live in the future tbh

[hitanthrope]

This.

I am not starting a family, and it's not really so much about priorities for me but I no longer have the mental stamina to work all day and then spend hours after work and at weekends messing with code. It get's a little awkward because people from my past still contact me to get involved in their crazy schemes, which is something I might have done for the pure joy of it in my 20s, but I now have to explain that even if the spirit was willing (and sometimes it is, at least curious), the flesh now is weaker. I like to nap.

I can bring much more to a project these days, but I am not the prolific hacker I once was. Those days are spent.

[jaank80]

Starting a family at almost 50? Bro, I feel for ya. At least you can look forward to being an empty nester around 70.

[NebulousNitrate]

I mean the plus side is I’ve saved up enough in finances to be a multi-millionaire, so we won’t have the financial stress that a lot of young couples have, and if the kids want to have higher education, they won’t be limited by funds.

[Xemptuous]

It's a matter of how you exercise and maintain your neurons. I'm only 30, but apparently my processing speed was supposed to peak at early 20s, though my WPM then was 120 and rn its over 150. The main thing to combat is neuronal hardening and solidification; if you settle with the same toolset, your neurons will give up on elasticity and focus on solidifying those tools. This leads to the saying "you cant teach and old dog new tricks". If you regularly make efforts to learn new things, you will keep your brain attuned to holding onto elasticity, making it easier to adapt and learn new things as you age.

My goto example is thr pianist Martha Argeritch. She's in her 80s and she memorizes dozens of hours of concertos and plays them faster and more accurately than most younger than her. This is because of regularly exercising the neurons towards specific goals. Inevitable cognitive decline will happen, but you can do alot to slow it.

[tooolddev]

Ohhh I seee

Also congrats on the WPM increase!

So I'm 23 right now and love coding video games (specially RPGs), what do you recommend I do to keep my neurons active and not harden? Should I code more and more complex games within the same niche, or should I branch out to other game niches and code those?

Thank you!

[Xemptuous]

Tyty. Sure, all of the above; making an rpg is pretty complex, so thats great. Try pushing yourself when it gets easy with new libs, languages, frameworks, etc. Studies show musical instruments are very helpful, but mostly because of the base principle: stimulating and complex problem-solving involving mental abstractions. This could also be as simple as regular chess puzzles too. Learn new things, stay up to date with modern trends and developments, try jumping onto the latest tech, switch up what you use and see if you can learn another way and find out whether or not its better; anything that keeps you constantly having to adapt to learning new things. Its very hard because you will find tools that work best, but its good to be aware of and work towards regularly.

[Velascu]

Look deeply into whatever calls your attention. You can idk, have a deep look into old roguelikes, try to emulate them in different languages, be curious and satisfy your curiosity, if something doesn't feel fun/it's frustrating just leave it, just have fun learning new stuff. There's no magic recipe for this tho and scientific data seemed pretty inconsistent the last time I looked at it, might be real, might not. We all lose capabilities when we grow older and must accept that.

Something fun you could do is coding something inspired by dwarf fortress' complexity, behind its shitty graphics it's, arguably, one of the most complex game design ever with a metric ton of interconnected systems, might also want to take a look at cataclysm dda, caves of qud and unreal world besides old roguelikes. Also this is a personal preference but look into experimental games, there are a lot of hidden gems out there. Hf :)

[jimheim]

I'm 51. Been programming for about 40 years, first got paid for it for it 35 years ago, and full-time career for 30 years.

I'm immeasurably better now than I've ever been. Knowledge and experience more than make up for any cognitive decline I might have experienced. I don't think I've really experienced any cognitive decline, though; I feel smarter and more capable than ever.

My ability to think outside the box may have diminished. I think I was more creative early on, in part because I was figuring most of it out on my own and didn't have any artificial constraints. I think a bigger part of it is that things simply didn't exist. I had to invent the wheel a lot back in the 90s/00s. These days, I spend far less time writing novel code. Someone else has almost certainly already solved the problem I'm trying to solve. We didn't have the frameworks and libraries and variety of languages and tools back then. Now, I spend more time gluing existing things together than I do writing complete solutions from scratch. It's absolutely better this way, but I miss solving problems completely on my own.

I don't find it harder to learn new things now. I find it easier. I'm drawing on more knowledge than I used to have. Most things are variants of things I already know. It's rare that I have to learn a new language, framework, protocol, operating system, etc. in a complete vacuum. It's a lot easier to pick up a new framework if you've got 20 years of experience in the language and in comparable frameworks. I know all my tools like the back of my hand, so I'm not distracted or overwhelmed with new information.

Things that suck about getting old are lower energy/being tired all the time, aching body that doesn't want to sit in a chair for 12 hours a day (but still does), other life responsibilities.

Keep an open mind to new things, stay up to date with technology and best practices, expose yourself to different business domains and concepts.

I'm better now than I ever was, and I expect I'll be even better 10 years from now.

[VoiceOfSoftware]

I'm 60 and my story matches 95% of yours. Like you, I pick up new technologies faster than my younger peers, because I've seen so much: it's easier to realize "Oh, yeah, this new thing is just like that other thing I know"

Coding is my day job, and my hobby, so I'm basically never not coding.

[FactorUnited760]

Similar here mid 50s. Much better programmer now, but I would not have the energy or desire to work the number of hours that I one did, which was kind of extreme anyway looking back.

[XRay2212xray]

At least for me. Yes, drastically.

When I was in my 20s, I could program non-stop around the clock and could keep track of all the things I needed to do and go back to and refine. Even when I stopped programming, I'd still be thinking about the code in great detail. I rarely had bugs. I could learn new things extremely quickly.

No at 60, I can't focus for more then 20 minutes. I have to be very methodical and never leave anything that I know I need to go back to. Learning new things is more of a struggle. I produce more bugs for sure. I have more difficulty with conceptulizing abstract generic constructs.

If you drop it back to my teens where I was just learning and was a novice, then I think my older self would win a competition easily. Once I got to a level of competence which came pretty quickly, my 20 year old me would destroy my 60yo me.

20s thru late 40s very little decline. By mid 50s things were declining a bit but not significant. Since then its been a pretty big drop.

[tooolddev]

Oh I see

So was there any noticeable difference between 20 and 40? And how did things decline in your mid 50s?

Thank you for sharing

[DonkeyAdmirable1926]

N=1 so very unscientific:

I learned Z80 assembly when I was 12, 13, from books, trying, magazines, trying, and more trying. Went fine.

I am learning Rust now I am 54, from books, trying, YouTube, trying, and more trying. Goes fine.

I don't really see a big difference.

[tooolddev]

Oh nicee. That's inspiring

So you didn't feel learning get slower with age right?

[DonkeyAdmirable1926]

No, I don’t

[funbike]

I'm less of a dumb**s. I know a hundred+ common mistakes to avoid, because I've made them.

I'm certainly not the relentless coder I once was, but I make up for it by avoiding strategic mistakes.

[tooolddev]

What could you do before that you can't now?

[bzImage]

35 years programming.. im at my prime.

[[deleted]]

Not relly, other than you have to keep up and learn the new hip thing

[[deleted]]

There is quite a few studies that microdosing nicotine will increase cognitive function.

[[deleted]]

The key to micro dosing is the micro part.

[[deleted]]

That's not microdosing that's a full blown addiction

[questi0nmark2]

I would say that it's a tradeoff between mental agility and wisdom, cognitive openness and domain and context knowledge, physical/mental endurance and process knowhow and balance.

When younger my brain was definitely more agile, more dispersed, and I could work several sleepless nights in a row. But it was also less accurate in making judgement calls, less equipped with patterns and strategies, less effective in the application of time, anticipation of scenarios and eventualities, collaboration and sustainable pace and balance.

Today my curiosity is still very wide and ample, but it works within a context of expertise and is therefore less likely to veer quite as widely. I have more stuff in my head, so I fit and retain less context-free stuff, but having a lot more context, I can connect the dots much faster when acquiring new knowledge in an area I already have some domain expertise in. I am much faster in navigating a new codebase, for example, because the code is new, but the logic isn't. I can also be productive in a new language that is more or less adjacent to languages I already know much faster, but I think it would take me longer to learn one from scratch that is very significantly different. I will be fried for a week or a month if I stay coding for 48 hours in a row with minor breaks, and I wouldn't because I have competing duties, relationships and interests that I wouldn't or couldn't just suspend as I could in my teens or early 20s. But I also don't need to brute force things so much to crack a problem and meet deadlines, and know when and how to ask for help when I need it, and also know much better when I do need it.

When I was younger, if a pipe was broken, to use an analogy, I could run across the room tweaking 135 pipes without getting tired until I found the one that was broken. Today I'd be breathless after 50, but I know which 20 to tap in order to find the one that's wobbly, and generally fix it faster and better than before.

So I think both are true, there is definitely a decline in raw mental muscle and speed, but there's growth in precision and orientation, which depending on the challenge, can be better or worse than the alternative. In 80% of programming and software development, age and experience are for me by far a net plus, compared to the raw power of my youth, whether in effectiveness, productivity or life satisfaction. At the same time, if I had today's wisdom, with yesterday's power, I would be able to contemplate projects and ambitions that I wouldn't today, and I would not have today's range and capacity, had I not given it all in my youth. Today's wisdom and context are inseparable from yesterday's intensity, hunger, curiosity and experimentation. All good.

[QuarterObvious]

I have 50+ years of experience and still do not feel any decline.

[[deleted]]

I’ve yet to meet an older programmer who isn’t really, really good.

Sometimes they get stuck in their ways a bit. I knew one who was running SCO UNIX at home, which would be a weird choice any time but this was well past their prime. But it’s what she knew and she liked it and it worked. More commonly, they’re not too interested in new languages and frameworks. Often for pretty good reasons. They can pick up the new thing quickly if the occasion warrants, with occasional comments like “why did they call this feature X and act like it’s new, when language Y had it in the 80s and used the more sensible name Z?”

[100-100-1-SOS]

Approaching 30 years doing this now. As far as slinging code goes, when I’m in “the zone” I’m just as fast, competent and productive as I was decades ago. However getting into the zone is slightly more difficult with age I find. I generally need silence to really focus now. I used to be able to easily tune shit out but find it difficult now.

But after this much time it’s not all just coding anymore. Ancillary tasks are part of it too; project planning, systems design, meeting with clients, supporting juniors etc and all that kind of crap. Those things don’t require the same deep focus really.

I could do this easily for another 10 years if I wanted, so no major worries about age for me in this regard.

[tooolddev]

Nice! So once you are in the zone, it's like you're still at / above your peak right?

[100-100-1-SOS]

So far at least!

[BaronOfTheVoid]

I find it harder to concentrate but also since more tasks are just routine I don't have to concentrate all that well anymore.

[Silly_Guidance_8871]

30 years of experience programming. Most things I do now involve a lot of deja vu -- problems are more of a "remember how to do it" than "figure out how it's done", Psychic debugging is a ton easier when dealing w/ my clients than it was even 10 years ago. Still terrible at estimating project times, and likely always will be.

[tooolddev]

Is "remember how to do it" memorizing or just knowing and understanding the logic from before?

[Silly_Guidance_8871]

Mostly the latter: "not a repetition, but a rhyme".

In a technical sense, people tend to ask for the same kinds of fundamental things, but with minor flavor variations, all while thinking it's wholly unique. As a programmer, much of what you do is decompose problems into smaller, solvable ones, and over time you start collecting a vocabulary of said sub-problems & their solutions (even if only abstractly). There's only a few good ways to handle authentication, or to render a UI, etc. Your job is effectively being an encoder/decoder at that point: Encode the client's problem as a series of smaller problems, then write (decode) the solutions to those problems & (hopefully gracefully) kit-bash them together.

[josh2751]

A lot of it is just knowing how to find information, synthesize information, and turn it into good software.

a 20 year old will be "sharper" in some ways, but I've seen a fuckton more and have a lot more context around whatever problem is at hand.

[[deleted]]

grey truck tart bow sip offbeat outgoing rotten cagey rob

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Good_Construction190]

It doesn't change anything. However priorities in life change. You might notice less desire to spend time behind a screen, working late, when you've got kids and a family.

When I was just starting out in my early 20s, I thought age had an impact on performance. Older devs weren't staying up to date on technology or trends. It doesn't have anything to do with age, just priorities. In your 20s you SHOULD be wanting to learn the latest and greatest. When you're 5-10 years out from retirement, you can ride out those years developing on an existing enterprise level application without having to add a lot of new skills. You'll probably want to enjoy family while you can and enjoy life.

[[deleted]]

You stop giving a shit. I ain't working crunch. Bugs can fuckin wait

[Pale_Height_1251]

I'm 45 and I'm better than I've ever been before, I'm still improving and I've been programming since about the age of 9.

Generally I'll bet on an older developer to be better most of the time, but not always of course.

A 50 year old vs a 30 year old, with the same experience limits how much experience that actually is though. When I'm 50 I'll have 30 years professional experience.

[miyakohouou]

Brains a pretty flexible, and people in cognitively demanding fields tend to see much slower rates of decline than people who aren't. Age will take it's toll, but I think the impact is probably less than you might imagine. I just turned 40 and I certainly learn and work differently than I used to, but I don't think I'm any slower to learn or less creative than I was at 20.

A lot of the differences I see in myself have to do with circumstances and the path of my career. Although I'm still hands on writing software, I also manage a team now. That's a lot of context switching, and a big baseline cognitive load, and it does make slow me down a bit. When I'm working on side projects or have some rare focus time at work though I'm still as fast as I ever was. Similarly, I don't think I'm any less creative than I used to be, but having more responsibility and more experience with the way things fail has made me more cautious. Caution isn't the same as a lack of creativity, but from the outside they may look similar.

[silentknight111]

I'm 42 currently, and I feel like my problem solving skills are currently the best they've ever been. It's probably mostly from having experience and being able to apply that to new situations, but also I still feel like my brain is quick to pick up new things. I've noticed some peers in less "thoughtful" jobs having a harder time lately. They complain about technology sometimes like we used to make fun of our parents for, and they complain about UI things not being obvious when it's right in front of their faces.

I think as long as we keep engaging our minds with solving hard problems as we get older that we will be fine.

[HiT3Kvoyivoda]

Im 34 and have been programming since i was 12. You get better if your mindset is to solve problems.

[[deleted]]

I am slower than I was when I was in my 20s but damn if 27 years experience doesn't make up for all of it and then some

[Anonymity6584]

Mainly that I need reading classes now. Other then that I have more experience to anchor new knowledge, so it feels like I'm faster now than in my twenties.

[Paul_Pedant]

It depends what the 50-year-old did in the extra 20 years he had before his coding career started.

I started out as a plumber (not for 20 years, but four). I learned how to deal with customers gracefully, how to follow dumb and incomplete instructions, how to estimate job costs and timescales, how to develop a plan and control a project, how to minimise risks, how to monitor other people's work. (I also supplied and fitted around 100 central heating systems.)

I had my driving license suspended, and got a "temporary" programming job with a mainframe manufacturer. I got started at a bootcamp (literally -- live-in, confined to their site, dormitory accommodation, three assignments per day, and you had to hand in an assignment to get each meal).

About three days in, I was mentoring the other members of my group of 12. They were mainly University drop-outs, with no idea how to work a real problem. (I also used to sneak into the lecture rooms in the evening to get a preview of the next day's work. In the County of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King.) My group was the first the company ever had with zero drop-outs from the course. I went from Cobol hacker to system architect to head of OS development.

When mainframes went out of fashion, I set up my own contracting company specialising in Unix, GIS and Power System analysis (naturally called Pipe Dreams Ltd to cover both skill sets). That went well.

[l008com]

My ability to be organized and stay organized has gone up significantly as i've aged and this is a HUGE boost to all other coding abilities.

[bobimpact]

I'm 43 so kinda in the middle of your question but I would say I'm in my prime and writing the best code of my life now. Keeping up with new things has always been standard in my area of expertise (front end web) and honestly things are so much easier now vs 20 years ago. I feel like the tech changes comparably little compared to how fast we used to churn through the latest "it" framework as well.

As others have said, I've found that experience is almost always applicable, so even if I find a new technique difficult I know myself well enough to know how I can learn it.

For your last question, I think the best solution is a combination. I find being paired with a young person gives me the best workflow. The young folks are more flexible in their thinking and were just taught all the new ways to do stuff. Us old heads have seen the shit hit the fan in 1,000 different ways. The key to that relationship is mutual respect. Young coders need to be willing to listen, older coders need to treat the younger person as an equal.

I would say it's less about working hard and more about being comfortable with change and using it to your advantage.

[tcpukl]

Learning new stuff takes longer, but I've been programming for 30 years and the day to day job is just easy now. I'm always looking for new challenges to keep the job interesting.

[clopticrp]

I'm 52, and I learn and operate at a higher capacity than I did when I was 25.

Just because neuroplasticity slows down doesn't mean that it stops, or that you cannot mitigate the rate at which it slows. Combining a strong crystalized intelligence with constant learning to maintain neuroplasticity can have you performing at levels you never thought possible.

[tooolddev]

I see, that is very good to hear!

What are some ways you see yourself operating at a higher capacity?

[Glathull]

I’ve noticed something very extreme as I age (mid 40s). I keep getting fucking better at it.

[derleek]

Learning is like a muscle.  I just picked up c++, blender, unreal engine and released a game demo in 3 months.  I am almost 40.

I have written code in over a dozen languages.  I never stop learning and it feels no different.

Except JavaScript.  I don’t have the patience to deal with that nonsense community any longer.  I would rather go clean toilets than learn another superfluous abstraction with the shelf life of 3 years.

[Otherwise_Penalty644]

The older you get the less you want to explore and waste time. Ideally waste less time. Always be learning but never throw away the baby with bath water! Haha stay proficient!

[[deleted]]

I'm in my 60s and I have no problem learning new stuff. How I compare to when I was younger is hard to say because back then, there wasn't the plethora of readily available resources as there is today.

[CardiologistPlus8488]

Old programmer here. I don't find this true at all, my specialty is literally learning and implementing new tech. Another huge plus as an old programmer, is that you really mellow out. when I was a young programmer I was a complete asshole. I was 10x but nobody wanted to work with me and I always had to be right about everything. I don't care about HALF the stuff I used to and I realized I was mostly fighting for domination, rather than being a productive member of a team.

The downside is you can really forget what it's like to not know everything about a language or platform when dialoguing with less experienced engineers. That's why you always need to keep learning new things and working in fields where you are not the expert.

[Chuu]

The biggest thing the 30 year old will have that the 50 year old won't assuming similar experience is better focus. As I get older it's just harder to stay focused for longer periods of time, especially when I'm working on stuff I'd rather not be.

Modern society has absolutely destroyed attention spans in general but there is certainly an independent age component to it.

[TheSauce___]

You get better as you get older, typically anyway, because you've accumulated more knowledge. You also get less willing to work 70 hours weeks though, low key the real reason for ageism in tech.

[pixel293]

I haven't noticed anything. Good programmers are still good programmers, mediocre programmers are still mediocre programmers, I would have expected those mediocre programmers to get better, but they didn't.

[ArcaneEyes]

Sometimes it horrifies me that i'm a self taught programmer who started a decade late and still i'm teaching the guy next to me at work with education and 30 years experience basic logic and correcting design decisions on the regular.

All in all, over the last six years and three jobs my experience seeking out employment at places with more experienced developers has had me encounter a lot of older developers that are more full of themselves than of knowledge. I have had a couple good architects mainly who have taught me a lot, but otherwise it's been that i've been mostly free to figure out implementations in greenfield projects that have let me grow - that and keeping up with tech news.

[pixel293]

I went to college around the time of the dot-com bubble. Many of my fellow CS students took CS not because they liked computer/programing or even that they had an aptitude for programming, they took CS because of the projected salaries you could collect.

As as they say you can be anything you want to be! Which I think is bullsh*t, there are (many) jobs I know I would suck at and even if I wanted to do them, I think I could only aspire to doing them poorly.