   When i get old, can i still be a programmer?
  i've heard several times about the voice of 'programming is only suit for those young ppl'. at first i didn't put much attention to such voice, but since i heard too many of them i doubt they are just gossip. i really like game development & i want to take a graphics progarmming career, and work in this industry for the whole life. so, could u tell me the truth about the relation between age & programming? Does age have negative effect to programming ability? or positive effect?thx![edited by - Challenger17 on May 9, 2004 12:50:21 AM]
  actually it has a positive and a negative effect, for graphics like directx it probably will be simpler to older programmers since they know all the math that goes with 3d graphics unlike your average 13 year old programmer who ''tries to make an MMORPG'', since there were like alot of posts on that . anyways programming doesn''t matter which age you start at. ;  Age has nothing to do with how much experience you have. Just prove to the company what you can do and you shouldn''t have a problem. I doubt they would hire an 18 year old over a 30 year old with more experience just because they''re 18. I could be wrong though?   -UltimaX-|Designing A Screen Shot System|"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!" ;  It can have negative effects if you get arthritis in an older age. It would be hard to type with it (though I suppose by that time, we''ll have decent enough voice applications )   ;  IMHO it really depends, it''s true that first of all you can get demotivated with programming games for many different reasons (not working on titles you like, life caught back on you like when you get a child your objectives can completely change, etc...).Then it can get boring like, if you are not working on the ''creative'' part it can become painful to always code the same integration stuff, the same kind of scripts, etc, etc...I don''t think however that intellectual capabilities can limit you (unless you''re over 90 maybe °: )...I''ve thought about that a long time ago and when I began working in games I had a really bad experience that put me down for a good year. Still, I was pretty hardcore and I had thought my love for games could never get down but yes, it did, and badly.If you do not code with experience (whatever the field) it is very likely than younger people will be faster, more motivated and cheaper at ''grunt'' work than you will be when getting old.It''s very important to stay motivated on the projects you work on. And if the problem comes from the company/team itself and there''s nothing to be done about it, then move.I believe that most people in the gaming industry do move a lot. ;  The programmers that I work with are anywhere from their early 20s to the late 40s. ;quote:Original post by Kafeen  The programmers that I work with are anywhere from their early 20s to the late 40s.   Same here.  The youngest programmer with whom I''ve worked professionally was 19.  The oldest have been in their mid to late 40s.  Most were in their 20s or 30s, with the average being around 29 or so.That''s been my experience in all kinds of programming, games or otherwise.;quote:Original post by Challenger17  i''ve heard several times about the voice of ''programming is only suit for those young ppl''.Let me guess: The people who told you that were teenagers with no industry experience? Or older people who wanted an excuse for not trying? ;  The big issue is that you have to keep your knowledge up to date. "young" programmers that have been educated in "modern" languages and techniques have an advantage over older programmers whose knowledge may be ... obsolete. Once you are actually employed, it becomes more difficult to keep track of and to actually study all the new developments in computer science: you have *work* to do. When I tried to get my dad to learn some bits of C++ he told me "I would love to, but I have these deadlines to keep up with, and WinDev (a VB-like RAD language) is good enough for me". I read somewhere that, as a rule of thumb, to remain competitive you had to learn at least one new "thing" (complete API, language,...) every year. If you don''t, you''ll be in trouble when Frob3000++ for GameDevOS is the "industry standard" and all you know is C++ on Win32 (or Python or Java or COBOL or C# or Fortran or Modula3 or ...)Keeping your knowledge up-to-date is the challenge. I learned Python last year, I''m toying with SQL this year... What about you?   “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”    — Brian W. Kernighan;  The reason its a young man''s job is because when youre old, you get to manage people instead... Who the hell wants to program when they can order other ppl to program for them ? 