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A comment on Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'. Parent comment

Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by yxhuvud on Sunday July 05, 2020 @12:47PM (#23740013)
Another thing those juniors are seldom good at, is knowing how to refactor an existing old code base. Which is not surprising, as everything they worked on during education is new code. Knowing how to change a code base from one abstraction to another is a skill that often take many years and lots of mistakes to learn.
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Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by sushshshsh on Sunday July 05, 2020 @02:18PM (#23740690)
Yet another boomer generalization designed to sow biases against hiring younger people.

At what age am I allowed to become a senior, oh wise one?

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Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by bombela on Sunday July 05, 2020 @03:20PM (#23741145)
We really gain skill for this over time.

As I gain experience, I find that I understand in more details existing codebases. This increased my chance of a successful refactoring. Especially when replacing a core abstraction without a full rewrite.

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Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by abraae on Sunday July 05, 2020 @03:07PM (#23741064)
"Junior" is about experience, not age. You can be a junior developer at age 30, or a sage by that same age.
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Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by eggsmediumrare on Sunday July 05, 2020 @04:30PM (#23741668)
The tech industry has a lot of problems, but bias against hiring younger people is not one of them.
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Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by mech422 on Sunday July 05, 2020 @03:27PM (#23741184)
Usually senior is 5+ years experience... At what age did you start working, oh snarky one ?
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Re:Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More' by yxhuvud on Monday July 06, 2020 @09:32AM (#23747662)
Which part of my answer gave the idea that this is about age?

FWIW, academia have never been good at teaching these skills, so the answer to your question is "You'll stop being junior with regards to refactoring complex code bases whenever you have enough experience of refactoring in big old code bases". Mentors pushing you in the right direction can also help. But this is very much a skill acquired by actually doing.

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