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With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35?
GrApHiX42 writes "I pissed away my 20s and now I want to go to school and get a bachelor's degree in computer science. The thing is, I'll be 35 when I get out of school, and I've read on numerous sites that there seems to be some ageism going on in the IT industry when it comes to older geeks. What have some of the 'older' Slashdot readers experienced as far as being replaced or just plain not getting hired because IT is a 'young man's game'?"
And in base 17, you'll be 21.
Tell them to get off of your grass.
Get off my lawn!
Honestly, I've worked with guys in their 40s and 50s relatively new to IT. I've never heard of ageism in my experiences. Hell, the fact that you posted to Slashdot probably is enough reason to hire you!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
While it certainly smells like shit(to me), I've seen how cat food is made and I've got to say it is probably a hell of a lot healthier than the shit I eat now.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Just based on the assumption that people become more agreeable as they age,
Errrr, what about me? I was a disagreeable cuss when I was twenty. By the time I was 40, I was unbearable. Today? I can't even stand to be in the same room with me!! All the same, age and treachery will always triumph over youth and naivete.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Just based on the assumption that people become more agreeable as they age
What about people like me who were disagreeable at twenty, unbearable at 40, and now even I can't stand to be in the same room with me?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Listen you shitbag.
I was programming the ENIAC back in 1947 at UPenn and I can tell you that I won't hire anyone under 80! The sad truth is that grads for the last 50 years are junk. They have no idea how to build their own Turing complete digital computers from scratch. They rely on "buying" computers or computer parts. They wouldn't know an Initiating Unit if it punched them in the face!
Not to worry, there are still plenty of businesses that will hire these software sausage makers, but in businesses like mine (where it counts, yeah I said it. My business counts. Yours obviously doesn't.) these jerkwads will be lucky to get tech support positions.
Of course, the younger generation is getting older. So it's getting more and more common to see older programmers
You'll know we've reached that significant threshold when you start seeing artificial hip technology advertised on ThinkGeek.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Thus spake the master programmer: ``When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave.''
The Tao of Programming, Book 1, Verse 1.
One of the problems with older programmers is that they cling to archaic concepts like their old favorite programming languages - C, C++, Assembler, Fortran. They worship at the shrines of the old pantheon of Wirth, Venn, and Turing. They don't grasp the modern subtleties of .NET and the modular beauty of DirectX without deliberate effort. They think that security is some absolute virtue having to do with cleansing your inputs, trusting noone and considering pathological conditions.
Pity them. They don't understand the beauty of rapidly advancing the user interface until the end user can with little understanding of the underlying technology create vast perfect representations of his vision until the whole thing seizes up just before he saves it just like it's a Visio diagram. That's computer science at its most cruel, its most perfect. If those geezers don't get it it's because they just don't understand how things are done these days. They've lost touch with the course of modern progress. They'll never be able to code a word processor app that consumes all the processor power of a quad core with 8 gigs of RAM. They'll never get why automatically executing code attached to a word processing document is an essential feature. They just don't know and they'll never know because they're old.
Pity them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My advice would be to piss away your thirties and consider the degree when you're 45.
Nullius in verba
You forgot to say to read Digg and not that dumb old guy 90's site Slashdot.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
That and the fact that IT requires someone to be well within the top 1% of mental and cognitive ability and those abilities peak at the age of 22 and begin to show measurable decline at 27.
Personally I believe there are other advantages that come with age and experience that offset those loses in certain roles but at some point that will catch up with you. It isn't whether or not you've forgotten more than that whipper snapper ever learned but whether or not you remember, readily recall, and utilize effectively more than that whipper snapper ever learned.
Dad?
If u spk entrly in txt, u r almst crtnly fr 2 yng 2 be qualified 2 answr OP qstn.
HTH, HAND.
I'd be *really* grateful if you could remember the ref - sounds like the sort of thing us oldies need to throw in to a job interview.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Make them walk around a spinning thing then lift them up to the light. If they try to escape send some dude called Logan after them to shoot them.
You'll know we've reached that significant threshold when you start seeing artificial hip technology advertised on ThinkGeek.
My titanium hip replacement acts as a range booster for my Blackberry.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
>you HAVE been working on them, right?) ;-)
C# when it came out. In the last 2 years, Oracle, IBM MQ, HTML/CSS and now PHP. Built a CMS system for a web site 'for fun'
Probably going to tackle Java next, bit of a shortage at work.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
And now get off my goddamn lawn!
Sorry, Logan is not available, he's gone out for a run.
I'm 41 and I will take that Pepsi challenge any day of the week and twice on Saturday at 7am.
Um yeah, I'm gonna need you to work on Saturday...that'd be great.
The kid is going to stand up, full speed, and bang the hell out of his head on the underside of the table. It is going to happen faster than you can do anything to stop it.
Thats because you are old.
So, what was your point again?
When the ball goes under the coffee table, and the kid goes under to get it - you know exactly what is going to happen next. The kid is going to stand up, full speed, and bang the hell out of his head on the underside of the table.
I spotted my 2-yr old do this the other day, hard but not so hard as to provoke screaming. He spent the next minute carefully proving that it was hitting his head on the table that had caused the pain, and then hitting it again a couple of times very gently and then a bit harder to see when it hurt. I was astounded at the level of reasoning going on as he worked out what had happened to his head and how it had been caused.
Coingratulations! You have a scientist on your hands!
Obligatory XKCD
http://xkcd.com/242/
I spotted my 2-yr old do this the other day, hard but not so hard as to provoke screaming. He spent the next minute carefully proving that it was hitting his head on the table that had caused the pain, and then hitting it again a couple of times very gently and then a bit harder to see when it hurt. I was astounded at the level of reasoning going on as he worked out what had happened to his head and how it had been caused. Your kid beats his head against the table and this is a sign of intelligence? Sounds like you have a future Republican. :)
Let's face it, we older folks waste a lot of time because our memory isn't so good. Like I spent an hour yesterday looking for my coffee cup, and then another trying to figure out what I used it for. And all those damn passwords! I keep trying to use "1111", but the damn IT department won't let me. So then I started using my cat's name; but after she died, I couldn't remember it anymore.
Plus, I wasted two hours filling out a web form where I had to choose my birth year from a list, but it didn't go back far enough!