Ask HN: How to get through college as middle-age and highly unemployed? - <AUTHOR> I don't know if I'll receive a lot of responses here as my situation is highly unusual for someone of my age and background.
I've read experiences of people who are of older age than I am who end up in a difficult spot to find employment after being fired or laid off from an otherwise stable job for many years. They're usually older people in their 40's and 50's.
At age 36, I am relatively young, but as those older people, I too am having trouble finding my acceptance in the job market. The last job I worked full-time was in late 2014 and I no longer see my job seeking efforts as seeking employment, but seeking re-acceptance for software development.
I live with my mom as I don't have the means to rent my own place anymore. I am still obligated to pay other bills as long as the money lasts (expected to run out in June). My day-to-day life of home chores and job searching gets old fast. She can't take care of me forever and plans to retire this year and fly back to her home country.
To fix my life situation I want to return to college. While some people return to college to pivot into a completely different career, I'm doing it to revitalize a dead-end career of 7 years (started 2007). I'm a self-taught software engineer with a BA degree.
Nobody wants to hire me for web dev work anymore. Maybe it's the huge glut of bootcamps that are saturating the market, because I've fallen behind. Most employers view me as someone who is senior in years but junior in skill. My job history mostly consists of working under-paid jobs in small companies, and I don't think working for another company like this will save me.
My goal is to to get into low-level embedded work in the space industry. I'd like to contribute to the vision of space exploration. And from what I've heard the easiest way to get into that industry is via internships.
So what advice would you give me to make sure I can make it on my own in college this fall? And get a job reputation again? <comment><AUTHOR> Some personal points I want to add (since I would go over my character limit in the OP): I'm 36, male, single and no children, living with single parent. Almost completely shut off from my friends and peers. Zero debt, but also almost zero dollars in savings.

Potentially, being single with no children would make me very flexible for work anywhere in the US, but long term under-employment and lack of personal funds is seriously holding me back.

</comment><comment><USER2> You are thinking about getting an MEng?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am still deciding between a BS or MS, as I'm not sure yet which would be appropriate for my background.

The main point I want addressed is how do I make a living while attending college for a second time, after a dead end career and facing long term unemployment.

<comment><USER2> A Master's of Engineering can be very good for the kind of career transition you want to do as you could get hands-on contact with space systems or anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> So ideally, I'd like to get an internship at NASA or an aerospace contractor. Do you know of any good colleges that provide the following:

1\. internship opportunities like the one I described

2\. good financial aid options for those returning for a MS degree

3\. job assistance while attending school (like a work-study program that can pay for my way of living)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Getting Older in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/ <comment><USER3> I'm going to apologize ahead of time. this might be a ramble.

63 year old white guy with little hair and a lifelong beard that is now white. A tad overweight as well. I feel for so many people expressing angst about ageism. I've seen it elsewhere but not where I work now.

I suspect that at the faster growing companies and companies in tech centers, mostly on the coasts, see more pronounced ageism.

My last job was at a bank in Richmond VA and there was clear ageism in IT when I got their. I moved to compliance from IT for two years and I was very successful and never observed ageism.

At 53 I moved to a web development manager and developer role in Higher Ed. I took a gigantic pay cut, if you factor in bonuses and options to work in Higher Ed. But I got to send my oldest to college at a selective school for free. A $200K after tax benefit.

I don't look back. My life is so much better now with a 40 hour work week and being in control 100% on how we architect our web and backend eco-system. I spend more than 40 hours because I love learning but I choose when, where and what I learn and work on after 40 hours.

I read these comments from people that are 36, 40, 40+ and shake my head. That is not old. 63 is not even old. I plan on working till I am at least 67. I love my job and I especially love the people I work with.

I find these days I spend less time coding and I end up with better applications because I think through the design before coding.

I'm going to ask around in Richmond VA and see what ageism exists in industry here and report back.

Keep learning, try as hard as you can to stay in shape and engage in critical thinking. Good luck to each of you in staying employed and staying happy.

<comment><USER4> "I find these days I spend less time coding and I end up with better applications because I think through the design before coding."

^A golden nugget buried in an insightful ramble.

<comment><USER5> And you don't have to be a certain age to learn that lesson and put it in practice.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely right. In my job I find that my seniority gives me time to think more however. It depends on your circumstance and the work culture and boss relationship.

I report to the CIO and he has little need to know details. He cares about long term progress and the big picture. He could care less about how we get there as long as we are taking care of people and doing it honestly.

<comment><USER6> Totally tongue in cheek, but you're never too old to learn that you should have written "He couldn't care less about how we get there..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 48 yo here, started coding when I was 14, so that's 34 years of building things.

Here's where I'm at.

I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war stories.

But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the kicker - _it 's all gone._

Software is ephemeral. One day your client does an upgrade, and then the thing that you spent years building and curating like a baby disappears. It isn't mothballed and put in the basement where visitors can walk by and see it. There's no photo of you standing by the thing that you can hang in the hallway and see every day. Your creation just completely vanishes without a trace.

All those years I've also been a musician and recording engineer. I've made a few dozen records none of which amount to anything that anyone else would care about. And all told I'm sure that I earned more money in one year of my IT work than my entire music career.

However, here is a collection of my work that I _can_ point to and say, "I made that." It's a creation that I can reflect on years and years down the road.

I take much more satisfaction in my musical creations than from my software creations, even though I was much more famous and valued as a software architect.

<comment><USER8> Dude. Open source software.

<comment><USER9> Even jQuery which is one of the most famous open source projects will be forgotten in 10 years or even less.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. Software with that level of popularity doesn't disappear.

<comment><USER9> "Unsurprisingly I now use React for most of my coding instead." \- John Resig, creator of jQuery

[https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/726058698989277185](https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/726058698989277185)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad.

It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof that the author is facing some issues, no matter how confident they would like to appear.

That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. Listen to two podcasts, two webcasts, subscribe to four magazines, teach courses, go to one conference per year, blog regularly, read blogs, follow the latest web trends. Your reward: you are still employable.

And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning and about new technologies and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks. Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or not even that?

It all seems fake. Like they're trying to put on a brave face while at the same time being scared and trying to convince themselves that all this new and shiny tech that they work with is awesome.

Why not have an honest conversation instead of pretending that learning some thing or another will make everything ok in the end?

<comment><USER12> Nah. The fact that this post exists is evidence that ageism is a thing.

What makes you think older people are passionate about the latest and greatest JavaScript frameworks? That is not my experience at all. New frameworks are just the same old stuff in a new wrapper. We've seen it all several times over. Like, backprop was a cool thing in the late 80s.

I, too, find this post sad, but probably not for the same reasons you did. This post, that makes me and you sad, doesn't make it any less of a fact that the young people in this industry think you are a useless dinosaur if you don't know what the new hot thing is about.

<comment><USER13> > think you are a useless dinosaur if you don't know what the new hot thing is > about.

Welcome to the technology industry.

<comment><USER12> Hi! I've been here since the late 80s. What do you want to learn?

<comment><USER13> Tell me how you've survived in technology without learning new technologies!

<comment><USER12> Not sure why you think I haven't learned new technologies.

I have learned them whenever I needed to. Most of the new technologies are not that special. That makes them easy to learn, but, also, kind of annoying because I can see that they're just repeating a mistake I've seen 20 years ago already.

<comment><USER13> I obviously don't think you haven't learned new technologies in 25+ years. It seemed like the claim to ageism was that the kiddies expect you to know the hot, new technology. Requiring knowledge of new technologies for candidates isn't exclusive to veterans. And it's definitely not a requirement of the other 90% of companies that are using older technologies.

<comment><USER12> I thought you thought that, because you said it. Perhaps I missed a nuance, English is not my strongest language.

My point, going up this discussion thread a few clicks, was that new technology is not always better than the old. Ageism comes into play when one's opinion about the new tech is dismissed just because one has some gray hair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not a bad post at all and it definitely hit home for me.

I'm 43 and have been doing professional development for 20 years (actually 20 years). I moved permanently to Saigon just 1.5 months ago. I'm teaching the Pivotal software engineering process (agile / extreme) to a 100 person consultancy full of really smart ~20 year olds who didn't know or understand process at all.

I keep up on all the latest tech and I have a youthful mind and body (most people think I'm in my 30's). I'm the oldest guy in the company and the only American here. This has quickly lead to a lot of personal mentoring on many levels, not just software, but life in general. The culture in Vietnam is strong and my team wants to learn from me. It is very exciting and new for all of us. It has been an amazing experience so far and I look forward to the future.

The best additional advice? Just be nice. It is so simple. The culture here is to never raise your voice or get mad in public, so I've taken it to the other extreme and I just smile and laugh a lot. Even when the servers are melting down. Viet are shy and have poor personal communication skills. By being friendly and nice, they have learned to trust me and that has opened up them up a lot. It has infected my entire team and improved moral almost over night.

Being older has a lot of advantages. I'm loving my 40's way more than my 20's. Cheers! =)

<comment><USER15> Some pretty sweeping generalizations about the culture after only 1.5 months. I live in a country neighboring Vietnam and there are similar perceptions of the culture here, yet in my experience these ideas are baseless and often ingrained in expats well before ever learning the language or sometimes even before entering the country.

<comment><USER14> "these ideas" \-- which ideas?

Yes, there is a ton of racism and generalizations among expats. As soon as I got here, I was added to a few private facebook groups where expats vent steam over the craziness of this country. I'm actually not a fan of it because it is honestly very racist, but I want to know both sides of the story. Much like democrats read republican news.

The language is _hard_ and learning is going to take me years. I'm trying my best, but when I say something as simple as 'một' (the number 1) to someone, they rarely understand me. Vietnamese also want to learn english (my company has a full time english teacher) and will not help me.

So instead of language, I've focused on learning the culture first and in 1.5 months (also this isn't the first time here, so it is more like 2.5 months) I think I have a pretty good handle on a lot of it. I make 1-2 (or more) new friends daily thanks to the friendliness of the people and because I'm out there networking like crazy. I have over a hundred friends here now, both from business and personal.

If I stop liking it here, I'll leave. I don't see that happening any time soon though.

<comment><USER15> You made two generalizations in particular:

 _The culture here is to never raise your voice or get mad in public_

This stereotype also exists about Cambodia, the country I've lived in for 4 years now. I can tell you that it isn't true about either Cambodia or Vietnam, since I've seen plenty of people in both countries get mad and raise their voices in public. The same happens of course back where I'm from in the US, and if I had to guess it happens at about the same frequency but I wouldn't rely on faulty human memory to make that judgment.

 _Viet are shy and have poor personal communication_

This is just a ridiculous thing to say if you've never spoken to these people in their native language. I have actually gone through the arduous process of learning the language in Cambodia, and I can assure you that speaking in a foreign language clumsily and constantly being worried about your inability to express yourself will make you more shy than you are in your native language. And I have to mention that famous park in Saigon where foreigners are literally swarmed by Vietnamese people eager to practice their English... is that shyness? I never talked to so many strangers in my life as the couple of nights that I sat out there.

And actually, please do not think I'm vilifying you or calling you a racist or anything. I can tell from your post that you're a nice person, whereas in both Cambodia and Vietnam there are an outsized number of expats who are just straight-up mean, bitter, and racist. These people unfortunately end up influencing the perceptions that new expats have.

I'm only encouraging you to come in with more of a blank slate, and to not delude yourself into thinking that you can know anything about the culture after 1.5 months. I'll be more willing to hear out generalizations after you've been there for years, learned the language, and traveled all around the country. Have you even been outside Saigon yet? I've been to Saigon, and it's not representative of the rest of Vietnam.

<comment><USER14> I feel like you're making generalizations about me without knowing the full story. You've taken what I've said out of context and quoted and commented it based on your own experiences.

I've been here longer than 1.5 months from multiple trips here. I've also been to Cambodia. I'm not pretending to know everything about the culture. I've travelled to other cities than Saigon. I drive a motorbike as well as or better than locals. I'm working here daily at a company full of (wonderful) Vietnamese. I'm not an idiot and can form my own opinions. I'm not an English teacher (which is another unfortunate stereotype in itself). I'm not bitter or mean or racist. I know about that park. I'm working on learning the language.

I still stand by what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Take acid and go to crazy festivals if you want to stay young. No really, do it once at least.

You need to bathe in youth from time to time in order to experience it - it's fantastic.

Of course you need to keep up to date, try to use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive the test of time.

For example, C/C++ is going to stick around for a while; make sure you're up to date (C++ 14 and C++ 17).

Pick technologies with a steep learning curves, don't try to compete with 20-year olds doing Javascript Bootcamps - go five steps deeper.

Broaden your horizon - read poetry, listen to all kinds of new music, watch experimental movies, travel around, talk to foreigners, eat weird food.

Study physics and philosophy, psychology and economy.

Have lots of sex - your wife will love you again :)

You have kids ? Great! Learn from them - everything. Try to teach them what they study at school - see if you can figure out a better explanation. Notice how much new stuff you learn about the subject, about yourself and your kid!

We're all getting old(er) every day - as we age this process seems to accelerate - and one day we will be no more.

But inside us lives the kid, the 20-year old, the 30-year old. It's still there, it can still be crazy and fun, we just need to remember to go on a date with our younger selves. All the rest will follow.

At least that's what I'm telling myself :)

<comment><USER17> > use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive > the test of time

I usually use statistics. If you select a random point on the lifetime of something. There is a 50% chance, that you are closer to the middle then either start or end. Thus: Always assume you are roughly in the middle of the lifetime. In other words, if some technology is only one year old, assume it is dead in another year.

<comment><USER18> That's a great rule of thumb. You should give it a catchy name so people remember it.

When I don't have good insight into whether it's worth my time to learn some new tech, I'm going to try to apply this rule.

<comment><USER19> This is the Lindy Effect[1].

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Elephant in the room, IMHO, is the technical interview process.

In software engineering roles at big/desirable/fast-growing companies, the interview process favors faster (by definition, younger) minds. Both young and old are put thru the same/similar coding interviews at many of these places, and often faster coders are younger, and get the job.

You can't fix ageism without fixing the interview process. Being jovial, healthy, nice and culturally sensitive are necessary and useful things to keep your job after you join, but the gatekeeping itself is biased on the other side, which reduces the intake to a trickle.

<comment><USER21> Why do you think often faster coders are younger? With many more tricks up their sleeves, a more experienced coder will be faster. Or are you saying compared to literally older people, but not experienced?

<comment><USER22> Cognitively, people do slow down after 21 or so. It is likely not to be a linear process, but I'm sure a quick google of research will find this. It is not, as suggested by the other comment, spurious feeling, but a well-known cognitive fact about humans. And experience in eal things doens't help with random tests, expecially if you're 20 more years away from your CS finals.

Whether this translates into a perceptible disadvantage in code tests is less likely to have been tested, but it is given what we know, and given other arguments above, quite possible and indeed likely.

<comment><USER21> At least one study suggests that unlike athletic abilities that do peak at around 20, fluid intelligence is more complex and may peak all the way up to 50 years. [http://m.pss.sagepub.com/content/26/4/433](http://m.pss.sagepub.com/content/26/4/433)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > let's look at the average age of IT workers at well-established companies. > Facebook: 28. LinkedIn: 29. Google: 30

I had an interview at Google a couple months ago and noticed that most people were pretty young. When I asked the person who was in charge of taking me to lunch about this, he said that it's probably because there are just much more graduates of CS now than there were before, and that Google would very much like to hire senior people as well but they're much harder to find.

I wonder how much of what he said is true vs ageism.

On the other hand, I wonder how much of a natural bias there is against older people if they have to go through the same interview process because it felt like a mental marathon to me. Although the interview only lasts a day it took a couple days for me to recover.

<comment><USER24> Also Atlassian says the same. They said last week that they just can't get senior people in Sydney. Personally I feel older people are not as good at the little puzzles they set as an entry test.

<comment><USER25> I applied to Atlassian many years ago and what struck me is their refusal to entertain non java devs to cross over. If they want more seniors they should consider c# or other language devs who could cross over.

<comment><USER26> That is actually a really hazardous approach, almost every job I've had as a software developer have introduced me to a new language and as someone who's been writing code for 10+ years there's hardly a large struggle to learn a new language or framework, especially if it's _just another c-like imperative language_.

<comment> saiya-jin I heard this so many times before about just another language... learning language itself? yes, can be done damn fast, plus everybody had some java-like language in their studies. Knowing this means almost nothing, we're talking about very junior-level resource.

You know gazillions of frameworks to achieve everything these days, their integration tricks, various app servers, CI toolsets and so on and on?

I mean, if you are senior in something, are you senior also in XXX language, meaning I give you spec, we talk and you deliver proper maintenable solution, leading dev team, managing all issues and bumps along the road? If no, and you just come as described junior, nobody has time to babysit you for weeks/months, and you are not willing to take junior salary. but that's what you are to the company.

<comment><USER27> I'm sorry. No actual senior person who is senior at java or c# takes months of babysitting to switch to the other. The beauty of a senior person over someone who is junior and knows only js, is that the senior person should have used many languages over their careers. Picking up a new language and/or framework is what senior people should be doing best. Most of the factors that go into a proper maintainable solution are all language agnostic. Good design, DI, IoC, all of the 12 factor app suggestions are all language independent.

Even when I was back in college many years ago, only the first class taught a language. From that point forward the teacher of each class said we're using language X and suggested a book if you needed help learning.

<comment><USER23> I'm not the person you're replying to, but can you really argue that someone senior who doesn't know a language and its associated frameworks is equivalent to someone who does know those things or deserves to be paid the same?

Sure, it's true that many things about good design are language agnostic. On the other hand, frameworks and languages can actually limit or enable what you can do, and that lack of familiarity with them has the potential to lead to mistakes.

<comment><USER27> If everything else is equal, then obviously knowing the _current_ language I need will push that person ahead. IME, the language(s) a senior person knows is the least important part whether they are a good hire though.

My reasoning for this is that we are always learning new languages and using new frameworks. Why would I let a better person go when the language is probably going to change, or worst case they pick it up in a couple weeks just by looking at the existing code base? One case where I would deviate a bit is if I was hiring for a functional programming position. In that case I would prefer experience with some functional language, but that is not much different than wanting OO experience for a Java/C# position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Age will matter more in a loose job market (more people than jobs). In a tight market as it is today, your skills are front and center, not your age.

That said, the OP is correct. You're only as good as your last two years and even that's pushing it. If the tech changes, you have to adapt with it.

I'm 53 as of yesterday (the 8th). I started with PDP-11's in the 80's, then VAX's, then PC's, BASIC at first, then C, then Visual Basic, then ASP, then C#/ASP.NET, and now I'm deep into AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, Redshift), NodeJS, AngularJS 1.x/2, ReactJS, and I'm still learning new technology all the time.

A lot of developers will transition to management and it's on my mind, but I'm also still drawn to solving problems at a code level. And there's always new toys to play with like Angular and React. Now we have .NET Core and all of its interesting avenues.

If you actually care about being a good developer, you will continue to work.

As long as there are jobs. Nothing will help you if the job market contracts. Then I do believe hiring becomes age-oriented with us older dev's labeled "over-qualified".

<comment><USER29> _Age will matter more in a loose job market (more people than jobs). In a tight market as it is today, your skills are front and center, not your age._

The fact that people are still claiming there is a shortage of tech workers, demonstrates that that isn't true. The industry wants young, cheap workers who come ready made with the trendiest skills, then it wants to ditch them rather than retraining or allowing them to accrue seniority, and hire new ones, who will work 80 hours a week for free soda and "stock options"...

<comment><USER28> Devs should train themselves. If you're waiting for someone to train you, you're not going to last in software development for very long.

<comment> dj-wonk Some rhetorical questions: How does a person know if they've trained themselves well? What if part of the training involves interacting with other people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Younger people are not smarter. They might learn faster new things. On the other hand, older people understand related new things much better as they already have a large context (experience). The biggest difference of my current self (44) to my younger self is that I did spend much more energy in my projects when I was younger. I created results much faster at the cost of limited consideration. Now, I can still burn for a while, but not as long as when I was younger.

<comment><USER31> Young people:

        1. Learn faster (better memory)

        2. Can keep their attention focused longer.

Number 1 actually becomes a bane with old people: my relatives over 70 actively developed an active reticence to learn anything new: I even theorized that they are instinctively protecting the limited amount of functional short term memory for vital tasks.

<comment><USER32>
        > Learn faster (better memory)

And yet, when I needed to learn XSLT (and then React), I was able to simply inhale it in one go because of my experience of similar technologies and functional programming, which come about from having been doing this quite a while.

Younger and quicker developers took a lot longer over it and to find their feet because there were many new concepts there for them.

As you get older, there's less to you haven't already learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Article mentions "RPG" many times: "RPG back-end", "RPG developer". For those who wonder what it it (like me), it is not a "Role Playing Game", it is IBM RPG language: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG)

<comment><USER34> How the author failed to explain this abbreviation is beyond me. Who in their 50s doesn't know that you spell out important concepts and key terms, then shorten them in parentheses?

<comment><USER35> Maybe it didn't occur to him that people wouldn't know what it is. If you were writing an article about programming, would you explain what BASIC stands for?

<comment><USER36> No of course not, everyone knows it stands for 'Badgers Are Super Intelligent Creatures'.

:)

(Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code... which now I type it out, obviously cheats. From here on, it shall be known as BAPSIC.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> One of the things that has made me old (52) and crotchety is that I learned Lisp very early in my career. That gave me the ability to see that 99% of "new" technologies were really just poor re-inventions of (parts of) Lisp. Even today, Common Lisp -- despite (or, as some would argue, because of) the fact that it hasn't been officially updated in decades is still not only a viable language but one of the best choices for many applications. But no one knows it because it's not the shiny new thing, and even young people still can't seem to get their heads around the fact that the parens are a feature, not a bug. And that makes me grumpy sometimes.

The good part was that I was able to build a very successful career while not having to suffer nearly as much pain as many of my contemporaries. The bad part is that now it's hard to find people to collaborate with. :-(

<comment><USER38> _Even today, Common Lisp is still one of the best choices for many applications._

Then why don't people build amazing and popular things with it? I don't mean one or two people build one or two things, but lots of people building lots of things.

Nobody uses it, but it's the best choice, can't both be true. And 'nobody uses it' is approximately true. It's not a mainstream JVM language or CLR language, it's not an AWS or Azure or Google Web Services language, it's not used for Linux Kernel, Windows, Oracle, *BSD, SQL databases, No-SQL databases, it's not used where Erlang is, it's not the research language Haskell is, it's not the fun esolang or the long-tail COBOL, it's not the new compiles-to-JavaScript, it's not the back of 3D games or VR engines, it's not behind Amazon's shop or used where Go is. It's not talked about in StackOverflow's most popular languages surveys, or most profitable languages for devs to learn, or most desired by employers. It's not an educational language like it once was.

Yet it's "one of the best choices".

I simply don't believe it. Any perceived advantages it has, in practise must be a wash.

<comment><USER39> A few notes:

* Google actively develops one of the Lisp compilers. Google Flights powers Orbitz, Kayak, etc. That's Lisp.

* There are several Lisp compilers in active open source development.

* There's a graph database written in Lisp called AllegroCache. It's good enough to support a business (Franz) for more than a decade.

* Another company (LispWorks) also exists and has a large portfolio of clients.

* Lisp has been used to make entire operating systems. Ones of the past, and ones of now. (Of course, an OS needs a community. But where are real OS's with GUIs in other languages?)

* Lisp has been successfully used in my own career for embedded systems to control satellite acquisition systems to, most recently, quantum computing. (At real companies.)

Just because there's not this huge buzz around Lisp doesn't mean no one is using it.

<comment><USER40> I don't even code in Lisp, but I knew the Google Flights engine would come up, because it seems to be just about the only "serious" application ever written in Lisp. And it wasn't built by Google, but their acquisition ITA, which hails from Boston and MIT's Scheme reality distortion field. (And even MIT has stopped teaching SICP in Scheme...)

<comment><USER37> Emacs, ViaWeb, Macsyma, the DS1 Remote Agent, much of the autonomous navigation software for the Mars Rover before the Pathfinder mission... And I have built a number of small-scale web applications in Common Lisp. I'm running one of them in production right now.

<comment><USER38> And Yahoo! paid 49 million dollars of stock to throw the LISP in the trash and use something else instead.

It wasn't even worth them spending 1 million dollars - 2% of that price - <USER2> training people.

[http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=s...](http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=31402)

<comment><USER37> Right. And that decision was surely one of the reasons Yahoo is the runaway success it is today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ageism is real in the Vally but it can cut both ways. In my current company we did a SWOT analysis and one of our advantages was "many old farts, and many former colleagues friends".

Yes, if you haven't been using AWS and GPGPUs you will be of minimal use to us but it's really valuable if you have already made a bunch of mistakes on someone else's dime. And in your 50s you're probably an empty nester, and can easily put in a 50+ hour week when necessary (which it often is, but not all the time, in a startup) and get more done in 40 hours than the squirts do in 60+.

You need a mix of ages and backgrounds. A bias to youth is as bad as a bias towards time-in-grade, or any other such bias.

<comment><USER25> > Yes, if you haven't been using AWS and GPGPUs you will be of minimal use to > us

> already made a bunch of mistakes on someone else's dime.

What is it with this industries lack of interest in investing in people yet demanding so many hours that you can't learn anything new at least nothing deep. Why not just make everyone a contractor but pay them appropriately as a result.

<comment><USER41> I guess I phrased that poorly! I meant battle scars are important: not everybody will have them (some will acquire those scars in the future). In other words, experience is important.

Sometimes experience gets in your way ("No, a scripting language will be too slow for this") and other times it saves you a huge amount of grief ("Really, we had better plumb that now, it will save us a lot of pain down the road").

Not sure I suggested many hours (quite the opposite) or not learning anything new.

<comment><USER25> Maybe it wasn't phrased as intended, but my point is few companies are willing to take someone on just because they haven't done tech X even if they are seasoned in tech Y which is broadly similar and have all of the communication, team working, leadership, problem solving and domain skills. Because they need to "hit the ground running".

The flipside is that of course employees don't hang around along in IT as they need to keep moving to gain the experiences they need to make their CV look reasonable. So I guess it is perpetuated on both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It makes sense to plug [https://oldgeekjobs.com](https://oldgeekjobs.com)

I've taken a small break from working on it, so the traffic has died down some, but feel free to post your tech jobs for free for the time being.

<comment><USER43> If you're looking for help, drop me a line. As a young(er) engineer, I live in terror every day of what may come down the road.

<comment><USER42> That's kind of you Dan. Yep -- I remind myself that ageism is the one form of discrimination that eventually affects everyone. There might be more...I dunno, but it keeps me on mission.

I run a Medium publication at [https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com](https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com). If you've got writing chops, I'm looking for contributors. That goes for anybody. Thanks again.

<comment><USER44> I would like to help you as well. Ill ping you on Twitter.

<comment><USER42> Feel free to e-mail if that works better. firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER44> I got in touch through twitter but will email you tomorrow morning. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm 39, ageism is real, but I'm gonna tell you to quit whining grow a pair, and what the hell is wrong with you if you cannot sell your strengths, wisdom and experience?

(BTW: just so it's clear I apply this same rule to everyone - this is the same advice I would give to any discriminated group, whether women in tech, people of color, Jewish or Asian or whatever group that find themselves on the victim side of discrimination)

Stop thinking of yourself as a victim. Be razer clear what your value is.

Almost every one will have some or other circumstance where some trait of his/her counts against himself, that is life, but these are merely speedbumps on the way, not show stoppers.

If you can't overcome bias at one specific company or in one specific country, move or do whatever YOU can do to solve it. Crying aint gonna fix it.

<comment><USER46> Isn't the point that you don't get a chance to demonstrate your value because you are overlooked earlier on in the process where some hiring manager sees how old you are and decides you aren't "a culture fit" for the company. Even if you being hired will make all us 20 somethings 20x more productive, you won't even get the chance?

Ageism, like most *isms, isn't something that you can simply throw individual willpower at. Anti-sexism isn't wont for women with willpower, it's a problem that lies beyond individual power, and requires collective power to combat.

> Crying aint gonna fix it

I think most people know that. It's because some people still deny or ignore the existence of these discriminations, so it raises awareness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> An interesting thing happened to me in college. As I progressed through it, I found I learned more complex stuff with less effort. A big part of it was I was able to see what was important to learn and not waste time on irrelevant things.

As I get older in tech, I have a similar experience. Of course, one can go too far and think everything new is irrelevant :-)

</comment><comment><USER48> Young software developers scope out the projects (time required to develop a project) very differently from older engineers. Seems like the industry has forgotten the role of the QA engineer! With experience, you know that you need time for architecture, risk planning and putting things in production. I see younger engineers quoting 1-2 months to just about every project; just earmarking enough time need to put together some frameworks and write a basic code. Cloud technologies and new frameworks definitely do make building projects easier. But scaling up a product is still not very easy and casual usage of several new frameworks, comes back to bite very often.

I just hope people stop being so hurried about seeing the first cut of their products. That itself would fix some issues around this topic.

<comment><USER49> This won't change. They've convinced themselves that it is best to move fast always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think it's more about not appreciating experience enough as opposed to discriminating against age. I'm 31 with 13 years professional experience. I've worked as an employee, contractor and as a single person start-up. Last year I interviewed for ~10 jobs in SV and I was rejected for all of them. None of the jobs valued my experience enough to consider my asking salary to be worth it. I make ~$300K USD contracting and was willing to take a pay cut to ~$240K to work at a big company and for access to big problems. I found out, via a friend, that one of the jobs I missed out on was due to my asking salary. They ended up hiring a guy with much less experience for ~$120K for the position. A year later and the project failed due to lack of experience costing many millions of dollars. I wanted them to succeed and I know that I could have done it but I'm not going back to $120K - at $300K customers only let you work on important stuff, no busy work. This story gets repeated over and over. There is a culture problem that doesn't value experience. It's not my problem because I'll go to where my experienced is most valued; it's SVs problem because it results in failed projects and wasted money.

<comment> saiya-jin this is not specific to SV, or US for that matter. 10x developers don't get 10x salaries of they work for bigger companies that have sort of rigid pay structures for given positions. You have to work on your own ('in your own company') to have that in 99% of the cases, rest are tiny companies with heaps of cash (how many are those?).

If you would be having same salary (apart from bonuses) as say some senior executive/CEO, well that won't fly, no matter of your added value or semi- magical skills. It doesn't matter how rational that might be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> "I have taken big cuts in salary three or four times in my career. I'm talking 10-20 thousand dollars a year." \- HOW can you do that? How does one justify that kind of long-term damage to ever being in a position that you don't have to work?

I understand the idea of it; to move into a technology or business with more room for growth, but if you don't have the time in your career to benefit from that growth, how can you do it?

If you're in your late 40's, early 50's, with a mortgage and/or children, or that point where you can choose not to have to work anymore is dangerously close. One badly-timed layoff, one forced pay cut and you're stuck.

Especially if you're in that age range; the last generation that ever had some hope for long-term employment with an employer, the generation that saw pension plans converted to 401Ks and didn't understand just how much you personally needed to take over funding your retirement yourself. You're dangerously close to having one badly timed layoff or large pay cut snatch the choice of not having to work away from you.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm always curious whether Zuckerberg stands behind that quote or if he looks back on it today as part of a youthful hubris he regrets today. I know if I look back on my early 20s I remember a lot of similar arrogance that I hope I've shed at least some of today.

</comment><comment><USER53> I worked at IBM Research where one of the top experts in malware research was a 60 y/o guy wearing a big copper bell hanging on the rope and he was diving into assembly level code like a water.

Smart companies want smart solutions to tough problems.

Assuming that solution is coming from certain audience, like age/race/gender based is a recipe to failure.

Smart companies are after smart people. Who cares about anything else.

</comment><comment><USER54> about the value of experience, I had it explained to me like this:

      If you see a toddler running after a ball that rolls under a coffee table, bending over to go under the table and
      to pick up the ball...
      You know what's going to happen next. That's experience.
      There are just different balls and coffee tables.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm a 42 year old technologist who just got laid off last week, and very much dread age discrimination. Although I'm told that I look about 8 or 10 years younger than I look, it still scares me. And, funny enough I'm about as energetic - or very close to it - as I was when I was 22. Beyond all the great notes that the blog post's author wrote, I think the parts about "exude energy...it's crucial to be spirited." really hit home with me. Especially now with my current situation, i appreciate this blog post!

</comment><comment><USER56> "You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty? They take them out and shoot them." \- Primer (2004)

One of the biggest killers of sedentary professions is heart disease, which is the number one killer in the US. People who work at Microsoft have told me they give free soda, sugared "juices" with artificial flavors, coffees and teas for free to their employees. These all are sources of heart disease, but the young engineers drink it up like a lost caravan in the desert. It's likely not that different in any of the other areas as well.

The cost for ailments such as heart disease is known to be one of the most expensive in the US. It requires extensive testing, support, medications and visits to the doctors and hospitals. Considering the extremely high health care costs the US enforces, this places a huge dent on insurance premiums companies pay as well as accommodation, etc.

These companies want them out before they have to pay more premiums on health- care and other factors related to health, age, seniority, etc...

</comment><comment><USER57> Get a job in an industry that uses tech, but isn't itself pure tech (healthcare IT for example). Then your years of domain experience matter.

<comment><USER52> This is some of the best advice in this thread. There are definitely domains within technology where experience is a key ingredient, but the best insurance against age bias is a deep understanding of technology coupled with a deep domain you have experience in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Umh... [http://www.kettlerusa.com/?fullSite=&cartId=&division=kettle...](http://www.kettlerusa.com/?fullSite=&cartId=&division=kettler+usa)

The design. The url. Clicked "add to card" \- default JS alert popup. Then some HTML pop up showed up saying something about my IP being banned because of BOTNET? What? Now refreshing the page I get a timeout.

This is literally the worst eshop I've seen in the past few years. I wouldn't hire a man who made this atrocity and sure as hell wouldn't like working with him.

</comment><comment><USER59> Yes! The most important thing I learned in academia is to never stop learning and to always push yourself to never get stale. Learning doesn't stop at high school, college or grad school.

</comment><comment><USER60> Existence proof. Can avoid ageism. But likely only via competence, creativity, and rep.

I've been lucky, I guess.I would add to continuous learning: continuous invention. New stuff in the world, not just new to you. In my case, almost entirely unplanned drunkard's walk of a career that I don't recommend anyone emulates, but it sure has been a wild ride.

I'm 69 last month. Started 50 years ago inside discrete component technology mainframes. Done hardware logic design, firewire and Medialink FPGA, datacomms Hard Real Time embedded firmware, synchronous and asynchronous comms protocol design, real time networking design in the Music world (before anybody thought it possible, we showed em!:), created cool 4G visual programming languages, lately Audio DSP inside gaming consoles.

Moral: Keep inventing, keeps you young, moreso than just leaning new stuff you won't be using until it is obsolete. A wide T LI profile doesn't hurt either. But that is not an after-thought, it's a side effect of your lifetime of energy and obsessions.

Vaguely thinking of retiring when I'm 72 or so. Want to make more music, DSP takes too much time.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'll probably be ~36 by the time I complete a PhD in CS. Should I be OK in terms of finding jobs at hip companies upon graduation (big 4, etc)? My areas of interest is in ML, algorithms but I'm completely OK with normal software development positions.

Reason I'm older is I decided I had a passion for it in my late 20s / wanted to do research, but had to go back to school to take classes before enrolling into a PhD. Hope my age + PhD wouldn't hinder me for software development jobs?

<comment><USER62> My experience has been that if you've got the chops, you've got no worries at all. Also, fashion is fickle, but right now you'll have people beating down your door to hire you if you're skilled with ML and algorithms.

I am in my 40s.

<comment><USER61> Thanks for your very encouraging words. You really brighten my day. I've always had an interest in theoretics/foundations and believe a strong mathematical backbone leads to better understanding of these fields. I simply couldn't get that working a normal job, so I know I made the right choice to pursue a PhD. Many, many people recommended against it (especially my friends who are pulling big salaries in industry), but for me it was always about the intellectual pursuit.

<comment><USER63> If you don't mind sharing, what school are you going to, and what is the area (the more details the better is good)of your research?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Related to fitness. I never went to the gym. However I was working on fitness related site for some years and as a lead there, I wanted to be reflection of this site I cared much about. So I did what I like, walk and running up the stairs.

Whenever there are stairs, I would run up them. Now, again I am not super fit, but I don't lose breath, everyone else kind of does. This gives me great pleasure.

I am older developer, it is getting hard, I will not lie. But, I am on top of latest technologies, enjoy my work, I am pain in the but.

<comment><USER65> Perhaps I'm a simple creature, but running up stairs is one of the greatest pleasures in life ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> 54 yo here. Although I have a bachelor's in EE, I have been developing software since the beginning of my career. I am not necessarily nostalgic but I sometimes ponder about the real time assembly I wrote for a Telex switch, or the CHILL code I wrote for a telephony switch. All of it pretty much gone, not being produced anymore. Or the Windows 2 GUI written in C, the multi tier apps in VB6 and Powerbuilder. They are gone too.

However having participated in these projects give me a lot of perspective, and I notice that nowadays I tend to write less and be more thoughtful. I see others here with similar experiences.

Now as for getting old, there is one thing I recommend: get old but never allow yourself to look decrepit. Be always clean, well dressed. Don't complain about your back hurting, or show off the medicines you take. No one likes to be around sickness or weakness, so pretend to be healthy and strong (or try to be, even better). I aim for this reaction - "that guy looks good for his age". This usually helps with ageism, at least in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER67> FWIW, I'm still on the earlier side of my career (though certainly not just starting out) and the direction of my learning has been away from fads and towards older, more established technologies. Erlang, Unix, etc. have all been around for many years, and while they do receive active development are still pretty well established and based off of sound engineering principles.

I also try and get beyond the hype. REST/HATEOS is cool? What about the things it replaced? What are the edge cases? What was the original design intent?

I also read from/talk with older engineers (many of whom I have the privilege to work with) to understand what things were like during previous fads.

Ultimately, the problem is about staying marketable while giving fair due to our life outside of work (I prefer the term "unpaid responsibilities" to "leisure time"). I don't claim to have solved this problem, and I still have concerns about what the future holds, but my instinct is that staying on top of fads is a trap that I want to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER68> Im closing in on 54. Having an absolute blast in tech now because i bring 4 decades of coding, life, and a number of different jobs to what i do today. And I devote every morning first thing to reading and learning something new - python, azure databases, IPC in C#, C and SBCs, ZigBee. There is so much out there at a price point that makes learning painless and fun.

In life i stay healthy as a vegetarian and practice yoga. Look after the body and the mind will largely follow suit but feed the mind with challenges daily and you will notice that you get better over time at a rate the javascript kiddies cant comprehend.

Maybe this ageism is jealousy from the kiddies because you think leagues ahead of them, and also jealousy from old managers who cant do anything productive now that their body of knowledge is no longer useful? Food for thought, for someone. I wont be wasting any time to think about it.

</comment><comment><USER69> Well, if the author is almost 60, it probably won't matter which career he's in, he would likely suffer from some sort of ageism. It doesn't matter if you're a programmer, or in finance, or working at Costco, if you're getting close to 60, most people will be skeptical as to whether you can really work as well as a 25 year old.

</comment><comment><USER70> Yes,there is ageism but there is also some remnant of meritocracy in IT development and operations (though both the evolution of devops and enterprise agile + ci/cd tool culture will eventually kill that imo).

The only way to remain in the IT game at the age of 45+ is to learn constantly and use your aggregate experience to determine what is good and bad and necessary. When most of the 20+ year IT veterans are in set piece environments they enabled or abetted...technological advent and invention is the enemy.

All the musings on how great a person you really are contra|outside tech are band-aids on reality. If you make your living in technology: be better than the other guy or be useful to them. That's all there is. Otherwise your days are numbered.

We can ramble on about salad days and personal achievement but the younger guys snicker and say 'listen to this fossil' and do their thing. As you would have in their shoes.

</comment><comment><USER71> There's a reason why ageism exists in the industry and it isn't because of some undeserved stereotype about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks.

1) Most business-critical projects have long lifetimes. There's a reason why banks are still running COBOL and mainframes, and why Java's continued promise of backward compatibility with every new release is so valuable to companies.

2) Maintaining legacy systems is a bitch. Nobody likes maintaining legacy systems.

3) Therefore no employer wants to hire somebody who writes code which almost immediately turns into legacy code, either because it's not tested, or not written using modern language features designed to make the language safer, etc.

4) Learning to write code in a modern fashion requires continued education.

5) Employers will not budget or pay for this continued education in a no- compete-clauses-are-illegal environment where smart employees will take the training and run to another employer willing to pay for the benefit of another employer which already put in the legwork of investing in that employee.

6) Employees therefore need to spend significant time educating themselves on their own time. This is great for the minority who are computer geeks who treat it as a hobby and it's terrible for everyone else.

7) Most people will not spend personal time educating themselves, because they prefer to invest that time in friends and family. This is all the more true, not less true, after one's children are grown.

8) Therefore they slowly become unemployable as their skill set turns obsolete.

9) Therefore employers have a hard time finding older people who do have that combination of a modern skill set and decades of general industry experience. And it's for the same reason it was difficult to hire any programmers at all in the 90's, because the competent labor pool (then in general and now in the older age group) is basically limited to computer geeks.

10) Continued interviews of older people who did not bother to keep their skill set modern and honed creates a stereotype that old people aren't "smart".

It's not a problem that some Chief Diversity Officer at some Big Four company can solve, because they're either going to literally fight human nature (people desiring quality time with their families) or they're going to adapt an affirmative action policy that'll only make the problem worse, as prefer- false-negative hiring policies set up to protect codebases from incompetence get overturned for what's essentially a political reason, breeding resentment.

<comment><USER29> _Therefore no employer wants to hire somebody who writes code which almost immediately turns into legacy code_

But what is "legacy" or not is not to do with technology, but fashion. Let me give you an example: everyone rants on here about what awful languages PHP and JS are. Is COBOL really a worse language than either of those? If so why? What algorithms or data structures can't be implemented in it? What tooling doesn't exist?

The only reason COBOL is considered a legacy language is because it's unfashionable, and a large part of that - I'm not even kidding - is the clothes COBOL programmers used to wear have fallen out of fashion. There's actually no reason that you couldn't use it for any application you might want to write today, and it would probably be more productive to do so than some modern languages...

<comment><USER72> COBOL has its limitations for sure, but I am an oddball because I love it. I took it for two semesters as part of my master's degree and am keeping an eye out for COBOL jobs by me. I would love to work in COBOL day in and day out.

The hardest thing about COBOL is the mainframe it has to run on. Without that access, I haven't done much coding outside of class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> As someone who transitioned to tech from finance, I can tell you that this trend (preferring young workers to old) is not limited to tech. The fact is companies in general are going to prefer younger people for labor. Younger people are cheaper, tend to have fewer obligations outside of work, and are willing to put up with more on the job.

As someone getting older and more experienced, you can take this one of two ways. (i) You can try to "learn new tech" and "stay up to date" in an effort to compete with these younger workers or (ii) you can actually listen to the market. And what is the market telling you? Yes, younger workers are more valuable for the aforementioned reasons. But it's also telling you that by the time you are 40 or 50, you should be implementing your own ideas, not someone else's.

</comment><comment><USER74> Oh cool, he made a webshop with an RPG backend. I last did that about 15 years ago, it looked just as awful, and just like him, I was so proud of my achievement at the time, that I couldn't see what an abomination it really was. It's a pity, that customer deserved better.

I totally believe age discrimination is real, and the Corgibytes author hits the nail on the head with:

> Only as Good as Your Last Two Years of Accomplishments

> Kent Beck has suggested that, with consistent use of pair programming, the > capabilities of programmers don't differ much after two years of experience.

Experience in our field rots away at an amazing rate. I don't think it's as short as 2 years, but if you're still regularly using techniques you mastered 10+ years ago, you're probably falling behind. I don't think lawyers, doctors or stock brokers have this problem.

<comment><USER13> I doubt that a lawyer, doctor, or (especially) investor could survive more than a year without constantly investing time in learning about their field.

<comment><USER75> Doctors now have to do 'continuing education' and many of them got pretty upset about that and / or were grandfathered out of the requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Elon Musk is 45. Does that make him old? Doesn't seem to slow him down.

edit: just saying limits seem artificial, that's all

<comment><USER77> How much hands-on tech involvement does Musk actually have in his enterprises? I imagine his focus is on business, leaving the tech for the tech professionals that are hired by his businesses.

<comment><USER78> > How much hands-on tech involvement does Musk actually have in his > enterprises?

From multiple interviews, Elon has stated that he spends the majority of his time on engineering and design problems, and very little time on business, PR.

<comment><USER79> PR BS & founder worship. If he wasnt spending time on PR he wouldn't be doing interviews

<comment><USER78> > If he wasnt spending time on PR he wouldn't be doing interviews

There's a difference between spending minimal time and no time at all on business, PR aspects.

> founder worship

I only stated the facts. Where is the worship?

<comment><USER80> If by facts you mean "the picture that Musk's PR machine wants you to believe as facts" then yes. Unless you spend lots of time with him personally so you state that first-hand. Somehow, I don't believe in superhumans. Elon is undoubtedly smart and successfull, but he is not a Batman (or Superman, or whatever).

<comment><USER78> By facts, I mean what Elon Musk has stated himself.

The interview with Sam Altman in How to build the future is one instance where Elon states this. In the same interview Sam also states that when Elon took him for a tour of SpaceX, Elon talked about the engineering aspects in detail and had a surprisingly good understanding of how the components worked.

Another instance is in the recode interview I think.

And how often do you see Elon going around doing PR stuff? AFAIK not much.

<comment><USER80> So, in an interwiev, Elon talked _some_ engineering aspects to another _enterpreneur_ , Sam, and Sam, who never did any rocketry, concluded that was a surprisingly good understanding of how components worked. How the hell Sam Altman does know anything about rocketry?

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Elon certainly understands some general concepts, maybe even decent amount of engineering (for a businessman). He is obviously an excellent businessman, and, I'd say, even better personal brand promoter. Everything beyond that is just PR that is obviously excellent since intelligent people fall for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Getting older in tech, most of the stuff I learned is obsolete: [http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/184668/readers_throw...](http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/184668/readers_throw_other_technologies_pyre/)

I'm a legacy software, retrocomputing expert now I guess?

Most of the old commercial software has released free and open source versions of itself or someone wrote a FOSS clone or whatever to do the same things.

I am 48 years old now, getting close to 50 in two years, and can apply for AARP and get better health insurance through them.

I ended up on disability, but been trying to learn new things and keep up with trends and patterns in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER82> > between 2008 and 2010, I was training Java developers at Circuit City on > Groovy and Grails. These folk were mostly late 20s and early 30s, and they > were just fine sticking with good-old, write-everything-yourself, > don't-bother-with-frameworks, Java.

You're assuming Groovy and Grails are better to code in than Java and something like Spring. Grails began as a thin wrapper around Spring. Its business purpose was to chisel market share away from vanilla Spring so its backing company (G2One) would get bought by SpringSource, which eventually happened in late 2008.

</comment><comment><USER83> While I believe their ageism in tech. So what. I'm 56, I've been programming professionally for 30+ years. Code is still code. Theirs not much new under the sun at a core level.

Consider this, many thousands of lives depend on my ability to write good, maintainable code everyday. I do Alarms, Telematics and 911 Systems.

So ageism. ya, it exists. But for every 50 year old coder, theirs 150 under 30 in the business. Its just the way it is. But I know, if I was in the hiring end of the game, I'd drop my dime on the old fart whose got a ton of REAL WORLD experience over some freshly minted grad every day of the week.

</comment><comment><USER84> Out of the software devevelopers I know, only a few percent are 40+, so my sample set isn't very reliable. But from what I've seen, the average (or at least median) skill set was better for younger people, where the best ones I've met are in their 30s.

My assumption is that there has been a point where software/CS started booming and people started getting degrees in that field. Among the 40+ devs I know there's a higher percentage of carreer changers, and with a few exceptions those have been generally less skilled.

</comment><comment><USER85> It's good advice to keep up to date and in shape, and always have, but unfortunately even that is often not sufficient.

Lately potential employers have been expressing surprise that I never went into management. I enjoy developing so was never interested---until I encountered a few truly incompetent bosses in the last few years and rethought my position. So I've read all the classics, such as MMM, Peopleware, etc... but found it is too late to be hired as a manager when you've never managed anyone.

</comment><comment><USER86> One of the strongest team members at my workplace, super smart, asks more questions than anyone else, thinks of the stuff the younger guys don't, basically would always want him on my team as he gets stuff done, is an older guy. I think he's prob in his mid 50s. (to be clear, I don't actually think mid 50s is old, but society sometimes suggests it is)

</comment><comment><USER87> 32yr old here. This is interesting to me, coming from times of 28kbps internet where the dude with a huge beard was a tech god.

Reading this and reading the posts, I'm aware of what occurs to be a trade off in young/age, in that young can be cutting edge while old tends to have wisdom/smarter about approach/worldlyness.

Seems shortsighted to think that young is better.

</comment><comment><USER88> It's ok to get older in the tech industry as a whole just not in spaces like are Silly Valley and or places that are trying to be such and draw that crowd.

The best place in tech for older is a govt. job where age skewers older and you may even be a minority amongst your fellow laid back/no drama, hard working Indian co-workers. The pay is more then good too!

</comment><comment><USER89> I read a study in the 90's comparing more experienced and less experiences multimedia programmers given identical tasks. In short, it concluded that the more experienced ones took longer to do the tasks, but did them to a higher level of quality.

That has always rung true to me, and I see that happening today.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the industry you choose matters. I have done work in the Medical and Transportation industries and the devs there seem to be older. I tend to gravitate towards development where the code simply has to work correctly. This means proven technologies are used as opposed to the new and shiny.

</comment><comment><USER90> I get inspired by the japanese Shokunin work ethics, it is well described on the Jiro Dreams of Sushi movie, a explanation can be seen here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q78xvcnmIMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q78xvcnmIMw)

</comment><comment><USER91> "Uncle, What do you think."

It's tech.this age thing.

Forced out of tech by invention/adoption of cell phone age is worshiped in my jobs today. Like Indians calling seniors "uncle" to show respect.

Age is my shield, my platform, my integrity and my perceived knowledge.

It's tech

</comment><comment><USER92> I've found out how to sidestep agism - work for yourself. Build it in whatever 'old' language you want, bring value, and profit.

Now I get to sit on the porch and yell at the youngin's "Get off my lawn!"

</comment><comment><USER93> > After years of scoffing at talk of prejudice in the information technology > field...

It seems kind of ridiculous that white men won't believe in hiring prejudice/discrimination until it directly affects them.

</comment><comment><USER94> This cuts both ways. As a young founder and manager, I must be extremely conscious of hiding my age. Without knowing the number, my team is fine. Once they know all hell breaks loose, at least for a while.

</comment><comment><USER95> Fantastic article. I am lucky enough to work with Don and he is amazing. Probably one of the most simultaneously brave and curious people I've ever met.

</comment><comment><USER17> > I'm only as good as what I've accomplished in the last two years

This implies no more salary increases after two years?

<comment><USER96> No, not at all, just that interviewers are totally uninterested in anything older than about that date. I've been in the industry for 16 years, the last 9 on my own as a consultant and have been kicking the tires on some full-time jobs in the last couple of months and it's definitely eye-opening: they really only want to talk about what I've just worked on and trying to use examples from anywhere else in those 16 years is met with suspicion. Some of the hardest problems I solved were when I was limited to ASP and Access. The fact I didn't build the thing in Mongo and Clojure doesn't mean I can't use those technologies. Some of it is the impedance between "technical" recruiters who are really just looking for you to say certain keywords and some of it is the age gap between older devs and the developers who are typically interviewing them.

I have a resume that's good enough to get me in the door at a few places you've heard of this time around but it was also turned down flat without more than a recruiter call at other places where my current experience exactly matched the tech they were asking for. I can't help wondering if they saw "16 years of experience" and either thought "too old" or "too expensive". I have considered doing a little A/B testing on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It just struck me that Zuckerberg is starting to get too old for himself.

<comment><USER96> And in a few years he will be touting the value of people right around his own age. It's human nature and one of the most valuable things about getting older (while continuing to learn) is to be able to see that kind of thing and value insight from anyone, not just the people who look exactly like you.

Harder to learn if you build up an empire of people who look exactly like you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Life is ageist.

</comment><comment><USER98> Great post; You should focus more on Consulting jobs;

</comment><comment><USER99> My advice to all is to keep an eye on the ball and understand where you are and where you expect to be every five years and have a plan. If you plan on being just an expert or individual contributor when you are 40 or 50, then expect to have to compete with those in their 20s. Not too easy when a 25 year old has fewer responsibilities at home (like teen-aged children) and can spend their spare time learning the latest fringe technology to make it more mainstream. Also not too easy to fit in culturally unless you have the developmental maturity of a 25 year old. (See my note about The Stakes at the bottom.) Adults with no responsibilities can drop acid and go to Burning Man without consequences. Responsible adults cannot without the risks they take impacting others. (in response to a poster's comment) That's what separates the men from the boys, to coin a phrase. No offense to ladies or others.

What I am not hearing in all of these discussions is talk of developing leadership fundamentals. They apply not just to one's job/career but to the individual and all aspects of their life.

There's 5 levels of leadership:

I. Individual Contributor Self-leadership. Responsible for producing work and getting along with others.

II. Expert/Manager Expert Best at what they do. Work on more complex projects. Display a special talent. Design a plan for new products. Further develop their craft. Innovate on projects. Demonstrate readiness to tackle more challenges

Manager Managers are tactical, focus on the short term. Lead individual contributors and experts. Develop staff. Focus is on improving upon weaknesses necessary to succeed at being more than an individual contributor or expert. Navigate organizational structures. Maximize talent of team. Think strategically about how team contributes to organization goals.

III. Leader of Leaders Leaders are strategic, focus on the long term. Focus shifts to training level IIs on their managing weaknesses. Training and developing (mentoring) experts and managers. Role is critical to the success of an organization. Poor managers have a huge and damaging impact because they leave high turnover and disengagement as well as low morale and productivity in their wake. Refined communication skills up and down the organization, acting as a reliable conduit for information to flow up and down. Develop business acumen. Develop organizational strategy. Develop new leadership opportunities.

IV. Leader of Functions/Divisions Maximize the contributions of all groups within the function/division. Strategize the development of the function for the future of the whole organization. Builds a competitive strategy. Ensures long term growth. Mentor and engage direct reports. Build key relationships outside organization. Deepen their intimate knowledge of other functions. Attune to industry and market shaping factors (sector acumen).

V. Leader of Organization Manages all functional leaders. Sets the vision and strategy. Ensures future success. CEO Build a team of differing strengths. Empower functional/division leaders. Create a motivating culture. Share the vision of the future. Position to be at front of trends.

As you move up 3 things change: \- Scope of your view \- The Stakes/impact of your decisions \- Proportion of management and leadership

What skills do you need to maximize your potential? What skills do you need to develop for the next level?

Leveling up is growing up. If you don't like or want to be a manager or leader, figure out why not, starting with understanding your emotions and managing your stress and anxiety. This is usually what stifles one's development.</comment>


Debugging Firmware with GDB - <AUTHOR> https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/gdb-for-firmware-1 <comment><USER2> I used to work on a legacy piece of business software, written mostly in C. One recurring issue we noticed about GDB was that compiling a "debug" version of the binary to be able to GDB it often fixed whatever problem the program was having, such that we were no longer able to reproduce the issue. So it wasn't uncommon for me to have this conversation with my manager:

Me: Customer is having their program X hit a SEGFAULT when they run it.

Manager: Did you transfer over a GDB version to backtrace the core dump?

Me: Yep.

Manager: What did it say?

Me: Well, when I run the same series of steps through the GDB version, it doesn't segfault, so I have nothing to backtrace.

Manager: Huh...

Me: What would you like me to do?

Manager: Move the production binary aside, drop in the GDB version. Leave it there.

<comment><USER3> You have uninitialized variables.

If you run debug builds, the compiler fetches an uninitialized variable out of memory that the OS nicely zeroed before it gave it to the process. If you run even the simplest optimizer, it will say: "Well, obviously, no one cares what this variable starts with, because they didn't initialize it. So let's just use the garbage value left over in this free-at-the-moment register." Expunge your uninitialized variables, and _then_ show me the disassembly code that the compiler got wrong. (Once upon a time I managed a piece of the validation for a C/C++/FORTRAN compiler suite. I have had this conversation more than once. :)

Exception: Real-time code with timing-specific hardware interactions. But that isn't an optimizer bug, that's a design issue.

<comment><USER4> There's all sorts of other things that can hard fault a release build and not a debug build.

<comment><USER3> Yes, yes. Very true, optimizers can break in interesting ways. And yet, 99.9% of the time when some whiner says: "The optimzer broke my software!" it is an uninitialized variable.

The other 0.1% of failures kept my team busy enough. But I never allocated any time to your problem until you proved that you had no uninitialized variables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      In this post, we'll walk through setting up GDB for the following environment:

          A Nordic nRF52840 development kit

Hoping this guide will be a useful reference for diving into the QMK[0] port to nRF52840 by Sekigon[1]. Scratch-built keyboards are my hobby and it would be nice to have something beefier than an atmega32u4 handling both the keymap/layout and bluetooth.

[0] [https://docs.qmk.fm/](https://docs.qmk.fm/)

[1] [https://github.com/sekigon- gonnoc/qmk_firmware](https://github.com/sekigon-gonnoc/qmk_firmware)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good luck! I'm a big fan of the nRF52840! It's a great fit for a BT+USB keyboard. Hit us up in the blog post comments if you struggle with following Mohammad's instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I want, and what I think GDB really needs for people to use its Python API's more frequently, is a way to easily manage, share, install, and collaborate with other people's .gdbinit and GDB Python scripts.

I've written a number of these at my previous companies, which all get loaded by default when any developer was debugging (basically wrapping gdb in a 'make gdb' style call). That works for internal development at a company where everyone is using the same flow, but that's nearly impossible in the real world as every one has a different setup.

I'm assuming numerous companies have written a Linked List GDB Printer (such as [https://github.com/chrisc11/debug- tips/blob/master/gdb/pytho...](https://github.com/chrisc11/debug- tips/blob/master/gdb/python-linked-list.md)) or a script that prints useful information from the global variables particular to the RTOS running. These are all great, but they are a pain to install.

Is there really no better way to share these across the Internet other than "Copy / Paste this text into your .gdbinit"? I'm thinking it would be possible and relatively painless to share these scripts through PyPi, require them, and load them like a normal package, but I haven't seen this approach taken.

</comment><comment><USER7> With modern JTAG probes and available software (like GDB or OpenOCD) it's unthinkable going back to debugging with SW emulators, in-circuit emulators or with bare LEDs or a serial port (sometimes you have none).

Being able to debug firmware is very important to me, up to the point that the fact a chip (or family) is supported by OpenOCD becomes a determining factor when choosing a component for a new project. Specially if the project is (or could be) open sourced.

I don't like proprietary debuggers. If a chip requires or forces me or my company to purchase Segger XYZ probe or a custom IDE, then it's not discarded right away, but back to the bottom of the pile.

When there is no alternative, I find myself writing OpenOCD flash drivers even before starting any FW development.

</comment><comment><USER8> who needs GDB when you have the good old fashion print statement... O.o

<comment><USER9> At my first job, we didn't have GDB or a console, but you could set a test point high. In the worst case, you attached an LED. In the best case, you maybe had a scope handy to log the data.

<comment><USER10> In the games industry, I worked with an older programmer that developed games on the Sega Genesis back in the 90s. He said often changing the background colour[1] was the "simplest" way of debugging state or branches.

[1] [https://segaretro.org/Sega_Mega_Drive/Palettes_and_CRAM#Back...](https://segaretro.org/Sega_Mega_Drive/Palettes_and_CRAM#Background_colour)

<comment><USER11> In my youth, us Amiga demoscene coders used this method too. You could basically measure CPU consumption by some sub-routine by setting a particular color on entry, then resetting on exit. Basically "raster lines" became a measure of time.

Pretty sure I optimized by putting a piece of tape at the exit line on the TV, then trying to make the color bar more narrow. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Choice - <AUTHOR> http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/01/04/the-choice/ <comment><USER2> Good lord, what a heart breaking story! To have a 5 year old realize she is dying of cancer! This paragraph really hit me hard:

"We know she understands because when we were home between her surgeries and the radiation treatments, twelve days of having the family together in the midst of everything, Rebecca got very mad at her sister for not letting her play with a toy. "It's for kids eight and up," Carolyn said, reasonably. Rebecca, of course, found this line of reasoning lacking, and came storming into the kitchen. "Carolyn won't let me play with that toy and I have to play with that toy!" she shouted. We explained that it was in fact for older children, and that she certainly might want to play with it, but that wasn't the same as having to play with it. "I have to!" she shouted again, her voice rising almost to a scream, breaking with angry, anguished sobs, "I have to play with it now because it's for kids who are eight years old AND I'M NEVER GONNA BE EIGHT!!!""</comment>


Functional Sieve of Eratosthenes [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/papers/Sieve-JFP.pdf

<comment><USER2> The following page gives implementations in 33 different languages:

<http://www.scriptol.com/programming/sieve.php>

Of course, many of them (including the Haskell implementation) fall victim to the criticism presented in this paper.</comment>


David Brooks: Good summarization of all the literature on financial collapse. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03brooks.html

<comment><USER3> It is odd to me that so many people are looking for some kind of abnormality which "caused" the crisis. Capitalism has had cyclical crises since its inception 300 years ago, so I would say that the crisis was not "caused" by either greed or stupidity, but is a naturally emergent behavior of the capitalist system.

Actually it is even more general than that. The pattern of exponential growth followed by die-off is common throughout nature - algal blooms, for example.

It seems that the whole discussion over the financial crisis has been warped and twisted by this absurd belief, in the face of all evidence, that the economy is in some sense "rational," that it has some kind of steady-state equilibrium, and that its problems are therefore caused by too little or too much regulation, too little or too much greed, etc.

<comment><USER4> > so I would say that the crisis was not "caused" by either greed or > stupidity, but is a naturally emergent behavior of the capitalist system.

But greed and stupidity are "natural" forces at work within the capitalist system. Asserting that crises are cyclical and "naturally emergent" doesn't rule out greed and stupidity as causes. It actually doesn't say anything about causes at all.

I'd also be wary of concluding that because certain phenomena appear to be cyclical, any similar phenomena must necessarily be an expression of that cycle.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I don't think it's exactly wrong to say that greed and stupidity caused the crisis, but it seems like a category error. If a farmer kept planting crops in September, and they died during the winter, and he said that they died because it got cold, then he'd be perfectly correct. But that way of phrasing it almost suggests that he expects it not to get cold again next year.

I think it's very hard for people to see bubbles as forces of nature, because in retrospect you can always see how dumb they were. So it always seems as though, if we just rationalize the system a bit, then we'll no longer have bubbles. However, no system has yet been invented which is capable of preserving rationality within a modern economic system. Hundreds of years of evidence suggest that whatever reforms are attempted as a result of this crisis will eventually run into the same mishaps and errors as ever before, unless someone comes up with a truly systematic account of bubbles.

You're right that I shouldn't assume that this crisis is an expression of cyclical booms and busts. I'm very puzzled by this crisis, and the information that's available is maddeningly vague and handwaving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read it and wondered why stupidity vs. greed were presented as exclusive alternatives. They could both be true -- there was a lot of clubby legislation to benefit the financial community, _and_ the models were wrong.

<comment><USER6> I read the article and wondered that exact thing the whole time, but this type of rhetoric is quite typical of David Brooks. He tends to paint things in a way where such that in the end he can point to the article as a conservative pundit and say "conservatism is _the_ way". He is kind of a wanker in that regard.

I have studied markets empirically for a long time. They fascinate me. But ultimately they're very simple. Markets are just games with certain rules. It's human nature to exploit knowledge for gain. And we're very good at it, which is why you see _home sapiens_ running things and not dogs or chimps. The emergent properties of nearly all markets are pretty obvious from the outset if you know the rules and just extrapolate.

Brooks is analyzing psychological motives, but he half misses the point (for the above reason; he wanted to come to a conclusion that supported a "conservative" viewpoint). I get really annoyed when people make the argument "but if only people hadn't mis-behaved we wouldn't be in this mess." Umm, any exploitable situation will be exploited by someone. Quit expecting morality to protect humanity. Don't you grok the Tragedy of the Commons?

In the case of the financial crisis the market failure was one of externalities. If you look at the value chain of how loans were originated, sold, and re-sold, the current crisis was inevitable. It's always been obvious that several of the layers of the industry simply had no risk, because intermediaries were able to make profit regardless of risk and the risk was concentrated in an external entity. This is my favorite (and funny!) explanation of the situation:

[http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&...](http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1)

So ultimately _stupidity vs greed_ is a red herring. In reality, a few _evil geniuses_ knew that they could make a ton of money with no risk, and they unleashed their massive resources to turn this money train into a years-long profit engine. The people that caused this have already punched out for more money than they could ever imagine.

IMHO the real solution here is:

1) prosecute _thousands_ of people for fraud.

2) Let the current banks rot with the pile of assets they've amassed. 3) capitalize new banks to re-start the credit markets.

3) _Vastly_ increase regulation.

It is not in the taxpayers' interest to have a system in which a misbehaving company can destabilize the economy.

<comment><USER7> Arbitrage is not evil - ie making money without risk. The problem is not behaviour - particularly since it is regulation that warped incentives. Everywhere you look is regulation - regulation encouraged home buying over rentals, taxes encouraged borrowing over equity, government sponsored enterprises underpriced/didnt evaluate risk, regulation increases the time it takes to fund and create new banks, and I've yet to see a convincing explanation of how the repeal of Glass-Steagall caused this mess in the first place. I also don't get why government doesn't allow for some form of rapid bankruptcy to restructure balance sheets and wipe out shareholders and to some degree, bondholders. I'm not sure why taxpayers and "good" innovative industries should be subsidizing bond holders and shareholders of businesses that didn't adequately plan for risk. If they're worried about runs on banks, the bulk of the capital in these firms _are not_ depositors.

The irony is that we're looking to regulation to solve this crisis? This while we're looking to bail out dying industries?

<comment><USER6> You say a lot of things... let me take them a few at a time:

On arbitrage - I don't consider this financial crisis to have much to do with arbitrage. I am not sure you understand what arbitrage is; it isn't ANY money- making activity. It's when a middleman exploits transient differences in prices in markets. In any case, I never said arbitrage was evil. However, if the arbiter makes his money by exploiting an externality, then someone is losing. This is simply a notable side-effect.

On incentives - I don't buy the line that regulation caused that many warped incentives. Maybe some, but not all. And this would have happened WITHOUT the regs that might have caused some of the incentive anyway. None of the tax policies shifted behavior that significantly. Being able to deduct mortgage interest does differentially favor homeowners, but it doesn't affect the risks involved in becoming a homeowner. At worst it artificially inflates home prices.

On Glass-Steagall - I don't know it well, but one very useful effect of it was to compartmentalize risk. As anyone on HN should know; isolating risks in independent buckets drastically reduces the chance of major bad things happening. It's the sheer scale of the crisis that makes it bad; most of this stuff was ultimately pushed by a small handful of banks at the top. It also separated different types of investing which prevented oligopoly situations and group-think from having as big of an effect on the market. It put different companies on opposites sides of investments rather than the same side and probably had the effect of improving real-world due diligence. But I am just WAG'ing here on this one.

On bailout - I don't think taxpayers should be subsidizing bond or equity holders in any of these financial companies. Not sure where you got that idea, not from me.

On regulation - it's not ironic at all. You are presenting logical fallacy. Just because reg A is stupid doesn't mean regs B-Z are. They are unrelated. I am all for regs that help prevent massive market failures or allow massive externalities to persist over time. In the end, the citizens pay for it in taxes and instability. It is true that more regs would probably dampen some of the GDP upside, but IMHO that's a fine tradeoff compared to the economic havoc of massive recessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any explanation that ignores the central role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played in the crisis leaves a lot to be desired - and can hardly be considered a "good summary" of the financial collapse essentially since they were taken over quite early on in the crisis.

Can we also blame traders and financiers for mispricing risk? Definitely - <USER2> let's also be clear that government influence through GSE's like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and poor government regulation played a central role in this. Further, as for leverage, high corporate taxes give companies large incentives to borrow to fund growth. What about the role the Fed played in keeping interest rates low and the credit bubble going? Sorry, I really can't see how this summary can be considered even remotely "good".

<comment><USER8> The leverage is a magnitude or two greater than possible defaults covered by Fannie and Freddie. At least when you talk about home mortgages, you still have a tangible asset behind it. The many layer of leverage on top of this provided phantom value and is where most of the horror is in the big numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> David Brooks is one of my favourite columnists and I still wont sign up for an account to read his writing. Call me stubborn if you'd like :-p.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.bugmenot.com/>

<comment><USER9> I'm aware of bugmenot, but for me it's an issue of principle not convenience. If everyone took this stance, Bugmenot wouldn't even be necessary.</comment></comment></comment>


Annotated Combinatorial Proof of Fermat's "Little" Theorem - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/combinatorial-proof-of-fermats-little-theorem <comment><USER2> There's also a very interesting proof without using any analogue of the Euclidean algorithm - [http://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0805v3.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0805v3.pdf)</comment>


Levy's new book "In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416596585?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393185&tag=gourneaucom-20

<comment><USER2> <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/01author.html> is an interesting article that talks about what the book has to say on Google's experience in China.</comment>


Show HN: BrandKoop – Discover the brand personality of your website - <AUTHOR> http://beta.brandkoop.com

<comment><USER2> Very cool! I just ran my site through it [http://beta.brandkoop.com/instantProfiler/result/M4muX7r8Atm...](http://beta.brandkoop.com/instantProfiler/result/M4muX7r8Atmn4ciD4)

I do wish it gave me some prompts to do something actionable. Like, "Hey, looks like you could be a little more sophisticated. Why not try..." Or ways to change the balance of my "Website Values" if I want or need to. Your site gives interesting insight nonetheless — I like it.

<comment><USER3> Definitely agree - would be nice to see why some things score highly.

[http://beta.brandkoop.com/instantProfiler/result/2nawF7XDTLu...](http://beta.brandkoop.com/instantProfiler/result/2nawF7XDTLu2E2Pbc)

Apparently I'm very sincere - but I was kind of hoping for a bit more competence.

<comment><AUTHOR> stay tuned. Step 1-give you the profile (done) Step 2-give you the tools to analyze the results and adjust your brand personality (coming soon). BTW sign up for the Full Profiler to get much more info and analysis, plus add your Twitter account to get analyzed. It's free, too!

<comment><USER3> Looks great - might be good to support multiple twitter accounts, I have my own @MrBananas along with the one for the website @noduleio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The profiles are just throwing out random numbers without any rhyme or reason.

<comment><USER5> Author here. We first crawl some pages and then used sentimental analysis like process to analyze these pages. Instead of sentiment dictionary, we built our own Branding dictionary. The result (radar chart and the bar chart) is based on the text used in the site. Thank you for the interest.</comment></comment>