I'm almost 35 so I'm definitely somewhere in the middle. I'm not at all scared of being sidelined by young guys because I do not define myself by current skillset (currently a web developer doing mostly Ruby/Javascript in various forms). What experience has taught me is that being able to program well is an incredibly valuable skill if and only if it is applied to the right problems at the right time. So while some of my skills over time have had an extremely short half-life (Netscape/IE 4 CSS), and some has had an intermediate half-life (HTTP/SSL/web servers) and some promise dividends for years to come (bash, vim, linux sysadministration), the ability to leverage and apply technology to real business problems is something that will always be valuable. It doesn't matter how many genius kids drop out of the ivy league, they have to earn their experience in how to succeed in the business world. Of course, if I am always looking for a job I am subject to ageism, but that is why increasingly I look to put myself in founder/consultant roles rather than simply coder for hire.
Re:The future of software developers
by lifeisstillgood on Sunday January 20, 2013 @09:59AM
(#5087076)
Do you focus on one or two specific business areas where you have had success and can say "I got 1mm worth of business for client x after a three month engagement"
If so - may I know your area / pitch? Just want to hear how others do it
Me too ;) However I think both kinds of programmers can probably form great teams together. Being able to rapidly build full-featured applications very quickly has become very important. But as the applications evolve, this can come at the cost of scalability and maintainability. Improving that point very often requires knowledge of the low levels of the systems. Same is true for a large class of weird bugs that occur.
Although I'm not sure whether most companies see this the same way. When I went 2 years ago through a number of phone calls with recruiters I realized they were really eager to find young people. Being an advantage for me at same point, this will obviously turn different when I get older. And probably at some point there will be a new kind of developers with a completely different way of thinking and working, while we are still stuck on Github, Stackoverflow and HN.... I wonder how many people are still stuck on Sourcefource, C++ forums and slashdot.org ;)