But I know I can force myself through hard stuff (prolog, category theory, ML research papers) but only if I can kick out instant gratification for a while (reddit, hn, videogames).

I remember this week more than 10 years ago where my graphics card died, and had to go with this ancient card with zero acceleration, and no videogames. I was surprisingly productive that week.

I'm slower because I think more about the code I produce. I have a wider knowledge of the domain I work in, cross cutting concerns, and technical choices that I'm taking into account when producing code. So I arrive at a more-correct solution faster.

I would say the tradeoff is worth it, but of course I would because I'm not in my 20s. If faster while missing more security issues, performance problems, and corner cases is what you want, my 20 year old self is probably better.

So it can look slower up front, but over the span of the entire task, it's faster.

I guess what I'm getting at is it's sometimes hard to untangle what changes are due to getting older, and which ones are due to the world changing. For me it's boredom, I used to have long boring summers, and get bored on weekends in the 90's and early 2000's. I haven't been bored in years. Is this because of the internet? But I'm not bored when I don't have access to the internet now, so maybe I just enjoy some peace and quiet now I'm older.

I wrote a small program[1] to help me maintain context between different projects, and I'm now more productive than I was in my 30s.

[1] I tried all the personal task management and task tracker tools, even wrote a few of my own. It turned out that my brain works differently to how the tools want you to work. My new tool which works well to keep me on track matches how I work.

IOW, now I don't have to adjust my brain to the tool, the tool is already adjusted to my brain's process.

Believe it or not, I actually named the executable 'frame'. However I'm unwilling to share it[1] until I have a good 5m explanation (it's all shell-based).

[1] Well, announce it, anyway. It opensource anyway.

I'm conflicted; on the one hand I would like to let the world know about it, but on the other I can see how it would be easily dismissed as useless when there's literally no docs about it.

I think I shall make a small example usage (terminal only) to demonstrate how it helps me, then post a show HN tomorrow or Saturday (depending).

I'll reply to your post again once I post the show HN.

It feels like a shift slightly away from "build the thing right" and toward "build the right thing". There's no sense racing to a destination that we don't want to arrive at in the first place.

Not sure if I agree with the intellect loss - I've not lost anything, I'm just much better at juggling multiple things and less good at the math-heavy detail work. However I'm still able pick up new skills as fast as ever.

A friend of mine is in his mid-50s and has kept working on those things, he's as sharp as ever.

Ruthless focus on having the maximum value for minimum effort.

I can’t speak empirically to how people’s self awareness changes over time, but this quote rings true for me. I have more humility and a different kind of confidence.

In particular, I am less confident about a lot of things, but even more aware when other people are overconfident. In other words, I know I don’t grasp the complete reality, but I’m damn sure you don’t either. :)

I’ve found my outward tolerance has had to increase. I still have an internal drive to shape outcomes in more meaningful directions. This has driven (or perhaps co-evolved with) the development of a wide range of skills to be persuasive and nudge people.

People can be so incredibly narrow-minded, short-sighted, inspiring, and/or wise, sometimes in the span of two sentences. Dealing with this juxtaposition is jarring and requires large levels of empathy.

It helps me to remember that many people vastly overestimate their individual influence and conscious awareness of what’s happening with their bodies and minds. I regularly aspire to balance what someone wants in the short run, long run with what larger groups need and expect. Kids teach you this very directly.

I'm 46 and have been writing code pretty much every day since 8yo.

I used to think code was the greatest thing, and would gladly write it for free. But I was also very arrogant, too impatient to negotiate, and didn't really give a damn about the team as a whole.

These days I find writing code pretty boring, I've already solved most kinds of problems in several different ways.

But putting all the pieces together, finding optimal strategies, negotiating with stake holders and making sure the team works well as a whole; I find those very fulfilling and exciting.

They absolutely are, especially in a team environment. In terms of the quality and velocity of the team's output, the competent dev who works well with the rest of the team is nearly always better than the genius dev who doesn't.

That seems to assume that, with age, you also gain power. As for myself, I'm hitting 40 now, and have absolutely no power over others whatsoever, and that's a pretty tough spot to be in, because now I'm bored with the tech stuff but nobody has ever offered me any other kind of work, and I don't expect anyone ever will, and I also expect it will be more and more of a struggle to keep convincing others to even let me keep doing that.

I recommend doing the work that you want (alongside your regular responsibilities) and if you're good at it the offers will follow. If you're not, you'll develop experience.

And it's not about power really, nor control; it's about not needing them; nudging things in the right direction almost without people noticing; to me, that's what people skills is all about.

But of course the level of experience helps, because with that comes some respect.

Sounds rough. We're not in your situation and probably don't understand the situation very well. If you want to continue the conversation, let us know. I'm not going to offer any kind of rah-rah optimism... Low expectations might be a good way to go.

A few questions: have you asked for other kinds of work? How have you asked?

Have you asked yourself this question: Are you selling or are you buying? (What I mean is this: in terms of linguistics and positioning, are you offering something of value or are you asking others to give you value?)

Ideally, you would present your "ask" in a way where both sides benefit. (Apologies if all this is obvious or uninteresting... I'm just starting the conversation.)

What else do we need to know so that we can offer thoughts that might be useful?

I like to think of a numerical age as a relatively high-variance (statistically) way of summarizing a lot of attributes: experience, wisdom, flexibility, free time, passion, pain tolerance, risk tolerance, technical skills, social skills, social preferences, self-confidence, over-confidence, family priorities, geographic mobility, neuroplasticity, and lots more.

I suggest taking an inventory by reflecting.

This helps in many ways:

* People are able to compensate for lots of weaknesses by using other strengths.

* Some roles, companies, industries will naturally align better than others.

* Reflection can lead to a certain level of acceptance. Own it; be confident in who you are. If there are parts you don't quite understand, be confident that you have started to increase your awareness and process of discovery. This process for many people becomes a very meaningful way to deal with uncertainty.

* Don't let others' assumptions (which are frankly, often relatively unexamined) creep into your brain unexamined.

People don't offer you opportunities because you're bored with what you have.

You offer them a different capability they need.

Don't wait for someone to come to you. Go out and look for the sort of work you want.

Something I invented early in my career seemed like a hotshot thing at the time. But I now realize it wasn't that great, and today I could do much better in my sleep.

One of the benefits of experience seems to be greater understanding of some things, even if that means realizing we're not as smart as we used to think we are.

"Greater understanding" is also one theory for the lower tolerance for BS that some have mentioned here. Early in our career/life, we have less basis to recognize nonsense and to understand its impact. With experience, we start to realize, say, a single thing that's happening has orders of magnitude more adverse impact than we can make up with all a team's clever activity, and that there's no good reason for it.

If, when you say "we urgently need to stop dumping toxic waste onto our lawn because it's an existential threat to our company and everyone around it", but a very junior person hears only "get off my lawn, you whippersnappers!", well, they'll understand someday. If they survive the Superfund site.

The system is still an unmaintainable ball of mud, but at least your for() loops can now have ridiculously high jitter and concurrency landmines thanks to multicore use on a system bottlenecked by disk IOPs.

Part of you wants to play the curmudgeon and say "I like my old simple ways" instead of yelling "you idiots are spinning wheels on useless APIs instead of learning to do any actual engineering analysis on maintainability or performance." It's tough to balance!

Where I currently work, I'm being mentored (even at my age!) by a developer who is in his early 70s. He really is a curmudgeon, but what he actually does is perform. His code is some of the best I've ever seen, and consistently outperforms that of the younger crowd. Then he just points out when he's using an "obsolete" technique to run circles around them.

Lots of 20-somethings would have no trouble working with a graybeard in his 50s if he was patient, played along, and acted as a mentor. But they don't want to work with him if he's rude and dismissive, and there's more of them than him.

You can be "correct" but still a jerk. If the people who you're rude to can influence decisions, they won't go well for you.

Nobody wants to work with a jerk, regardless of their age.

LOL, you've been fed some real bullshit, my friend.

"Fluid intelligence or fluid reasoning reflects the ability to solve novel problems, the kind that aren't taught in school," he explains, "whereas crystallized intelligence or crystallized knowledge measures learning and problem solving that are related to schooling and acculturation."

These different types of intelligence show different patterns as you get older.

Crystallized intelligence "averages 98 at ages 20–24, rises to 101 by ages 35–44, before declining to 100 (ages 45–54), then 98 (55–64), then 96 (65–69), then 93 (70–74), and 88 (75+)," says Kaufman.

Fluid intelligence drops much more quickly. Kaufman reveals that it "peaks at ages 20–24 (100), drops gradually to 99 (25–34) and 96 (35–44) before starting a rollercoaster plunge to 91 (45–54), 86 (55–64), 83 (65–69), 79 (70–74), and 72 (75+)."

[1]: https://www.sciencealert.com/does-iq-decline-as-we-age-one-t...

I've also seen the fnords. Makes it difficult to drag my ass to work sometimes.

this is not true, and not substantiated. maybe you meant “if you don’t stay healthy,” but it’s still not an accurate number, or even a thing which is specific enough that attaching a number to it could mean anything.

there is some improvement in cognitive function from exercise, but that applies to all age ranges.

> The most important changes in cognition with normal aging are declines in performance on cognitive tasks that require one to quickly process or transform information to make a decision, including measures of speed of processing, working memory, and executive cognitive function. Cumulative knowledge and experiential skills are well maintained into advanced age.

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

The years add depth and complexity to our filters for processing new knowledge. Is the delay measurable? Probably. Is that 'decline'? Maybe it looks like it by the simplest standards.

Is there a meaningful analogy in neuroscience where simpler and more robust 'structures' - superficially appearing as a degeneration - could be a reflection of efficiency and optimization?

I can tackle complexities in my 40s that I couldn't dream of in my 20s. (Maybe I'm a late bloomer.) If my 40s -> 60s is anything like my 20s -> 40s, mentally, I'm just a little bit excited to be honest.

Total outsider thinking out loud. The suggestion that our 20's is any sort of peak (besides maybe animal / physical) gives me a laugh. I was a simpleton in my 20s.

I think the apparent conflict resolves if you consider that you have learned to be a better problem solver, a better learner, such that a small decrease in some 'raw ability' is completely overshadowed by gains from learning.

For a concrete example I'm much better at close reading now. Even if younger me was 10x as intelligent there are problems he'd bounce off that I wouldn't simple because I now know how to slow down and read thoughtfully.

41 here and I agree with most of the comments from the elder. One thing though I think we older people have to acknowledge is that we might have changed the BS bar. It feels a bit to me like saying that there is no music like the one from 20 years ago.

I am trying to be positive and that is something I say to myself :)

The joke, for those who don't know:

Interviewer: What would you say is your most impressive skill?

Candidate: I am ridiculously fast at math.

Impressed, the interviewer wants to test this: "Ok then, quick, what's 347+578?"

Candidate (confidently): "5!"

Interviewer: "w ... what? That's not correct! That wasn't even close!"

Candidate: "Yes, but it was ridiculously fast!"

Sure, you could become excellent at guitar in your 40s, but unless you're extremely motivated, you probably don't care about learning it as much as a teenager would. Same goes with learning or becoming anything else.

(Of course, everything here is on average.)

I honestly think its truly just about filtering BS. I get hungry about the right things. Just like I get passionate about the right relationships. But not goin to drop everything for someone that shows the tiniest bit of interest me like maybe when I was young and had no idea what kind of relationship I wanted.

1 - https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/this-is-the-avera....

Older people typically have more money and connections. If anyone could start a company I guarantee you more young people would start companies.

And not to mention experience. You may want to start a company when you're younger, but it's harder when you don't know what you're doing.

I haven't actually noticed a decline in that with age. But what I have noticed is that the more experienced a person is, the sooner they're likely to spot when a new direction is probably a dead end and avoid going that way in the first place. Less experienced people tend to have to actually walk in that direction for a while before realizing it's going nowhere.

I bailed from coding after full-day Java debugging session that made no progress. Way too stressful at+after some age.

So the BS was technical, not peoplal.

After kids those unpaid thought cycles are spent on how I can help my kids grow into better adults.

It actually forced me to change my work habits a bit. Before I could be less methodical about working through a problem because I had lots of spare brain cycles outside of work. But now I have to work through problems more diligently.

I'm 48, I'm definitely very much improved as a programmer and engineer relative to when I was 28. You think you know everything when you are 28. When you are 48, you realize you had a lot to learn back then. Anyway, I'll be doing this for at least another 30 or so years. As long as my brain works, I'll be using it.

The reason old people become slower is not necessarily that they are old but because they retire and stop using their brains. Not using your brain is bad for your brain. Age related deterioration is of course inevitable. But you can slow things down a lot by just keep on using it and staying active.

Your certainly not losing your intellectual abilities at 40 or 50, far from it.

40 and 50 year olds will just be moving on to the next stage of their career, using their collected experience to manage and pass on knowledge. Coding requires focus which is difficult to come by generally when you're older and juggling many responsibilities that you've created in your life up to this point like family, finances etc. You certainly don't become dumb.

All the attributes of big tech organisations you described could be applied to many other fields. When you're at the bottom (like a smart 20 year old) and have no control, it can be frustrating. You can rebel against it, play the game, or go out and do your own thing.

Well, I lost this way earlier than that already hahaha. Totally agree with your comment by the way.

    "Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'
    Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'
    They just use your mind and they never give you credit
    It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it

    9 to 5, for service and devotion
    You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion
    Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me
    I swear sometimes that man is out to get me
    Mmmmm..."

So. Much. This.

I'm an "older developer" as well and the one and only thing that gets in my way of learning new things is the amount of useless information in the documentation and code.