Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech?

Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by mywittyname on Monday January 20, 2020 @05:00PM (#22102435)

Veterans have seen technologies come and go. If they were keen to hop on every new technology that came out during their career, they'd literally never get anything done. The risk of adopting a technology that will fail high and the results can be disastrous.

It might be seen as stodgy to pick Java along side a relational database for a brand new application over the latest JS hotness plus NoSQL. But we know that Java is going to still be around in 20 years, we know the language and architecture can do what we plan, and is easily able to expand and scale as the product grows. We know what deployment, integration, maintenance, etc looks like.

What young developers don't see is the long, long, long line of failed technologies that were hot, then faded it obscurity. It's very hard to bet on winners.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by jesterson on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @01:21AM (#22104697)

Came here to write this, but @mywittyname did it better.

Young colleagues have tendency to use framework/technology as a solution to a problem, while it's always an instrument to reach a goal.

Older colleagues can assess solution for multiple point of views - security, long term manageability, integrability, support, etc. Younger colleagues are focused mostly on narrow field due to lack of experience.

Obviously it's generalisation so take it with a grin of salt.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by nkkollaw on Monday January 20, 2020 @05:02PM (#22102450)

This is exactly how it is.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that new devs have to always bw kept entertained and know/care very little about the business, and would rather make the company tank and have fun experimenting and move on, than get the job done.

Maybe I'm getting old.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by parliament32 on Monday January 20, 2020 @05:20PM (#22102559)

It's a "big picture" thing. It's not necessarily about age, but rather experience. A dev who's been in the industry for <5 years simply hasn't seen the sheer amount of shitty tech come and go over the years.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by jerome-jh on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @11:18AM (#22118820)

Agreed here too. Older devs also love new tech. Sometimes you can just pick up the new idea and adapt it to old tech.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by boznz on Monday January 20, 2020 @06:36PM (#22102980)

Agreed. Learn something well and if it isn't broke don't change.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by oromier on Thursday January 23, 2020 @08:13AM (#22127217)

I don't see javascript being obsolete in the next 20 years too.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by vkoskiv on Thursday January 23, 2020 @09:16AM (#22127667)

But that hot new JavaScript framework/library is long gone in 6 months time.

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Re:Ask HN: Are older devs more resistant to adopting new tech? by doggydogs94 on Monday January 20, 2020 @07:18PM (#22103203)

If someone is paying me well to learn a new technology, I have no problem taking it on.

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