|
As someone who has been professionally programming for 22 years, I have seen many people passed by because their skills were deemed out of date. Frequently it isn't overt discrimination - just expediency. Regardless, this tends to favor the young over the old - and I want to keep on programming for many many more years!
The only way to avoid obsolescence is to continually educate and refactor your own abilities.
I have an Amazon Prime membership. I probably buy 8 to 10 technology books a year (and fully read many of them). I go to any local training opportunity I can to learn (mostly free, some low fee). I lobby my company heavily for trips to conferences (things are too tight right now though). I've recently put myself through MS certification.
I check out what the community is doing with web sites like CodeProject, what the MVPs are doing with blogs like CodeBetter, etc. I've picked up a lot from reading about the ALT.NET projects and looking at how that is impacting the future of .NET.
I try to get my peers at work involved - but they rarely participate. is a shame, you can lead a horse to water...
Dale Thompson
|
|
|
|
|
Agree with you.
We must educate our self for new technology.
|
|
|
|
|
Dale Thompson wrote: I have seen many people passed by because their skills were deemed out of date
I'm about to throw out 6-8 pages of CV or at least condense it to "previous technologies", bloody thing is littered with stuff that no longer exists or is so obscure no one uses it any more. Is turbo pascal still in use by Delphi I wonder.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
|
|
|
|
|
What if your main job is working on with COBOL?! Will you continue learning on it? I am lucky enough to be the one. So, I never waste time on work-related education.
-----------------------------
Can anyone understand my poor English?!
|
|
|
|
|
Zhuofei Wang wrote: What if your main job is working on with COBOL?! Will you continue learning on it? I am lucky enough to be the one.
What happens if the company that you are working for closes their doors and there is not a single COBOL position available in a 100 mile radius of you home?
John
|
|
|
|
|
Continual learning is critical - don't become that old guy who knows COBOL
That is the reason why we also have an age-old truth too --> "Art is long and Life is short".
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
|
|
|
|
|
Well, the truth is in my university They are still teaching COBOL.
|
|
|
|
|
My company now is expecting us to put in a little extra time here and there to keep up with the demand. Sadly, they are not hiring any new blood, and won't pay for the extra time we use to learn new techniques and technologies that could be beneficial down the road. But as another person mentioned, we are not your average developer and actually do side coding as a hobby.
|
|
|
|
|
Learning new things may reduce the time you need to develop something dramatically. During the years I saw so many abominations produced by junior developers just because they didn't realize there was a better way. So they coded tirelessly for days resulting in hundreds of lines of code when the same could be done by calling a single function or just by 10 lines of code, however they decided to reinvent the wheel...
|
|
|
|
|
Ali Jawad wrote: My company now is expecting us to put in a little extra time
In a team rah rah recently the boss suggested that 15%-30% of our time should be spent on investigating new technologies, and propmptly loaded us with work that takes 120% of out time - that management for you.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
|
|
|
|
|
I tend to do my 'assigned' project in bursts of furious coding. This gets them done comparatively quickly and I use the residual time to browse new topics, techniques, and occasionally annoy people at the CodeProject.
This has been a remarkably lucky experience - more often than not, the topic that caught my interest is coincidentally what someone needs in a relatively short time frame.(Aside from the annoying part)
Possibly it's all tied to risk taking. I made myself a wall-sign (just letter-size), which looks like:
Damnant quodnon intelligunt. Audaces fortuna luvat.
CARPE
DIEM
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
How often do I look at it? Rarely. But those times it's a reminder of who we (programmers) are - or ought to be.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to stop bothering them and just go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
|
|
|
|
|
Damnant quodnon intelligunt. Audaces fortuna luvat.
CARPE
DIEM
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
They condemn that which they do not understand. Fortune favors the Brave.
Seize the Day.
I will find the way or make the way.
just in case someone needed it translated.
|
|
|
|
|
Based on the various software developers I've interviewed over the past 2-3 years I would say the reality is nearer zero percent bother to try and continue their education outside of a work environment. It really is quite depressing.
|
|
|
|
|
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: Based on the various software developers I've interviewed over the past 2-3 years I would say the reality is nearer zero percent bother to try and continue their education outside of a work environment.
Yes, but remember this is CodeProject.com - people who participate in surveys here are hardly "your average Joe" developers.
|
|
|
|
|
So, do you as a hiring manager do what you expect of your staff? I find it even lower for management than i do for staff. Sit back and drink that cup o Joe matey!
Also, this is a contextual and relative statement you are making, are you hiring lead programmers? are you hiring fresh out of school? are you paying adequately? does your HR write the help wanted tags?
"Looking for SQL Developer with 10+ years of experience in SQL 2008, wiht Masters. Pay negotiable, 30k USD." seriously i have seen ads like this... so much wrong with this tag line.
There good programmers and good managers and the quantity of either is usually directly proportional to the amount of money to pay them.
|
|
|
|
|
good god all the names are taken wrote: So, do you as a hiring manager do what you expect of your staff?
I spend £2500+ of my own money last year on my own education. I expect to spend roughly the same this year, and I expect to do it again next year.
That's money for books, journal subscriptions, user groups, community conferences (I can't afford the commercial conferences) and so on.
good god all the names are taken wrote: Also, this is a contextual and relative statement you are making, are you hiring lead programmers? are you hiring fresh out of school? are you paying adequately? does your HR write the help wanted tags?
I've been in a position of hiring across the range. "Seniors" are the worst. They leave university and think "right! That's my education done". A friend of mine recently discovered that one of the devs at his work didn't know what inheritance was after almost 15 years working with OO languages!
A couple of years ago HR stuck their oar in for a few weeks until we managed to rewrite the job spec to something more sensible.
We ask for basic skills only. We don't have a massive shopping list. SQL Server and C# (or VB.NET) - That's pretty much it. If it is a senior we ask for X years of software development experience (so long as the last couple have been in our technology area - and even then, we are open to cross training)
|
|
|
|
|
I agree with you, but to be honest for senior developer i don't think most of interviewer ask basic .net related questions.
They just ask more advance questions and that's why basic knowledge is lacking
Having say this i can tell you, i have many friend that don't know answer of this basic question but they are very good programmers.
|
|
|
|
|
You hang around with the wrong kind of people
|
|
|
|
|
So, what kind of people do I hang around with?
|
|
|
|
|
... I mean, it was just a simple question. It wasn't even an opinion.
|
|
|
|
|
I can't speak for anyone else; but programming for me is more than just a job.
(I should note that if my company would pay for it, I would accept the money. =-)
I also suffer from a constant feeling of inadequacy when it comes to my skill sets and thus am inclined to try and better myself when ever possible.
|
|
|
|
|
JT.Hetland wrote: I also suffer from a constant feeling of inadequacy when it comes to my skill sets and thus am inclined to try and better myself when ever possible.
I was reading that this is common in both beginners and experts. Beginners for the obvious reasons. Then there is a period in developing a skill set called second-order incompetence when a person is sufficiently good at something that they start to think they know it all. In order to move past that (sometimes arrogant) phase they have to start to have an understanding of what they do not know.
I would say I've moved past second order incompetance (and for me it was a bit of an embarrasingly painful experience when it hit me I wasn't as good as I'd led myself to believe) so I am now acutely aware of all the things I don't know. I've become more cautious because I know more about my abilities and that it can take a varying degree of time to pick up anything new.
I can't tell from your profile where you are in your career. If you are at the start, be aware of the pitfalls that await you. If you are past the stage of SOI, congratulations! The feelings are perfectly normal (so I'm told)
|
|
|
|
|
Absolute beginner (at least that is where I would list myself), I'll make sure not to get too cocky when I make it to an intermediate level. Thanks for the tip
|
|
|
|
|
To me as a programmer if you are not continuously learning new technology you will become obsolete after a few years or at minimum it would be more difficult for you to find a new job in technology that was popular 10 years ago.
John
|
|
|
|
|
There are thousands of programmers out there working on COBOL, VB6 and Delphi applications that will only be rewritten when there are no resource left to fix and extend them.
|
|
|
|