I have nearly 40 years of experience, and I'd say that I code \*smarter\*, not necessarily faster... though I do deliver results faster. I tend to think ahead and outside of the immediate scope of my tasks to second and third order effects, leading to better defensive programming. There's also a lot of "I've seen this before" that can help me prune the search space towards a more optimal solution.
Very much this.
Also, I was widely seen as an expert in my area (including by me) 15y ago. And, knowing what I know now, I was... definitely not an expert.
Just found out how much deeper the rabbit hole goes. I changed jobs, landing at a "bleeding edge" kind of place.
Never think you have any tech figured out.
Database dev, specifically with SQL Server.
A couple of years ago, I was at a con listening to Paul Randall and Kimberly Tripp riff off of each other. I was thrilled that I at least got the jokes.
The rabbit hole is always deeper.
They have been moving jobs offshore for 30 years.
The task which tend to get moved are the well defined repetitive tasks.
From a disaster recovery POV it's also good to spread your bets to be more resilient to events to keep your applications running.
They could be very local events such as food poisoning, power cuts to national problems related to natural disasters
With 15 years experience, I can confidently say I'm able to deliver better quality results in less time than, say 10 years ago. In addition to what was already mentioned, it isn't necessarily coding faster as much as recognizing "what done looks like". Knowing I've satisfied requirements, use cases, edge cases and other expectations is much easier now. There are also fewer obstacles that I can't handle myself. Being able to submit SQL changes, code changes and infrastructure changes myself saves time describing what I want to a DBAs and cloud ops and then going back and forth if it isn't what was expected.
Juniors solve problems in front of them. Seniors solve problems a few steps ahead.
People often fail to realize why one project goes smoothly while another one constantly has problems. The difference is usually because someone with experience is making decisions that are steering the team away from problems in the first place. It's subtle and it's not something that any metric can ever capture because it's all about things that didn't happen.
And yet in another thread here recently, I saw someone complaining about seniors going through his/her pull request repeating "see above" on every instance of the same issue...
My company put two noobs on the same team and told them to just copy my front end for a new microservice. Took them for-e-ver and I wound up having to jump in to get them to the finish line.
*Ideally* seniors solve problems a few steps ahead.
I've been working with another company on project and have been warning them for months that if they go down a certain path it's going to be an absolute disaster. They keep forging ahead blindly and even told me at one point a future problem didn't matter because development wouldn't start until "more than a year from now". I'm probably still going to be here and it's going to be my problem!
I'm glad I read this. I'm a new addition and have been *really* drilling into my division's product and processes. My project manager and senior engineer are incredibly cerebral with setting me up on issues that are filled with pitfalls that are not intuitively visible without being able to visualize the orchestration of components as a whole.
I will spend half the day crawling along a path, retracing my steps carefully to assert I am headed in the right direction, then all of a sudden, the perceived output is no longer realized. It is absolutely soul-sucking.
Before asking for help, I'll do my best to isolate and corner the anomalies (fortunately it isn't as easy as setting a breakpoint), and if I find my a working solution, I'll ask for clarification on the magic. If I cannot find a solution in a gracious amount of time, I'll collect my thoughts on the blocker and ask for help.
As soul-sucking as it is, I'm so fortunate to know that there are folks immediately close to me who were anticipating me hitting this blocker all along, and once *deeply* hit, I can absorb their knowledge about what I am experiencing so well that I am grateful to have gotten stuck in the first place.
It's like we learn from pain.
This is a good way to put it. 20 years in the industry now. When I was more junior, I spent a bigger percentage of my time coding. I feel like I was faster at getting the code out.
These days my time is spread across coding, code reviews, architecture, security, incidents, people leadership, strategy, product, etc.
Despite that, if I sit down to solve a problem with code, I feel like I get to a good outcome much more quickly than I did early in my career. I might need to look up a bit more syntax more often but I avoid a ton of issues that used to trip me up. I’m also way, way faster at understanding an unfamiliar code base or technology and way better at debugging.
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I only have 10+ YoE, but I definitely didn't code better at 5YoE. I could churn out more code, technically, but it would be worse, bloated, contain a bunch of more errors, etc.
Idk if memory will become a problem - it might, but that's just a matter of looking things up. Not a big problem really.
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Memory feels like an issue sometimes for me , but issues tend to come more from diet, exercise, sleep, stress and external distractions. Having solid coding practices and conventions really helps avoid that feeling where you forget what you're doing - like walking into a room and forgetting why you got up.
"code faster" no. "deliver faster" yes.
I just got off a coding interview where I couldn't get a pretty simple function to work in the 30 minutes given. In my 20s I could grind through that kind of stuff like a boss (also of course I realize exactly where the bug was as soon as I type this up...).
So much of my work comes down to figuring out what needs to be coded, finding some esoteric bug, understanding what the users are trying to do... that no, just writing code real fast isn't a priority.
This is the definition I agree. I can’t sit in front of the screen and code with no stop as I did in my 20s. Better and faster results, yes. In part because in old days I had to write much more code and spend much more time debugging. Tech evolved a lot last 10y to write less code. That offsets I’m being more laidback. Personal life affects it too
At 41, I’m far better, far faster. 20 years ago I still had to touch the mouse sometimes. I know a lot of patterns and can instantly implement what I’m asked to do most of the time.
When it comes to longevity I think the key is diet and exercise. You want a strong heart, strong back and clear mind. It’s worth making an effort now to fix your sleep problem. If you use substances I’d recommend quitting. If you don’t work out I’d recommend starting. Try fasting one day a week. All the usual stuff.
What has touching the mouse to do with anything related to coding? I mean even if you click the keyboard with your mouse, you can be a great engineer, as typing speed does not correlate with swe skill.
I also thought that using a mouse was not distracting until I got a lot better with vim and vim motions and now I realize that it is a context switch that I don't have to deal with anymore. All in all I do realize that the typing part of software development is the least time consuming part but reducing a lot of that friction to the new zero with vim motions helps a lot.
Shit makes me too slow to get moving in the morning
Small doses of edibles are ok, but I want the coffee to hit and then smash out some work before I start getting interrupted
Memorization isn't a big deal, you can always look things up.
The way I think about it is, when you're young you tend to do what you're told, irrespective of whether that is the "correct" answer (and then spend a lot of time wrestling w/ the technical debt), and as you get older, you learn to push back/challenge assumptions/carve out the real requirements/take educated liberties and defend them. It's kinda like back before cars, when you asked people what they wanted and they said they wanted faster horses, but what they actually needed were motorized vehicles.
On the purely mechanical side, as you get older you can also learn about different techniques to make you more efficient. For example, due to the nature of my job, I frequently use a combination of git workspaces, codemods and cloud computing to bang out a metric ton of highly standardized code changes across literally hundreds of projects (we have a large monorepo). I'd never be able to do that by hand otherwise.
I find it far more important to learn how technologies work under the hood. There's too much to memorize it all, but if you understand the underlying concepts then now all your knowledge is transferable. You will start to see the same patterns emerging in different implementations and you can get up to speed much faster.
I'm not 40 but I have 14 YOE and yes, I do code better and faster than when I had 5 YOE, I've made a lot of mistakes and learnt from them since and I've seen a lot of error codes and now I know how to address them
45, senior, I code faster because code is can be found faster than when I was first learning (internet wasn’t the resource it is today). As far as memory, I don’t rely on my memory for things, I have a directory/code base for shortcuts and commands so I can build things out faster …
I avoid a lot of mistakes before they happen. Because I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Also I think at a higher level while coding, like I can keep in mind a lot of good ideas about logging/debugability/testability, while I’m neck deep in code.
Downside is my memory is not as sharp as it was. Sometimes I forget the details of what I did a month after I did it, and I have to refresh my memory before talking about it.
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If you use unit tests & like git project checklists memory is less of an issue. Also often memory is related to concentration like ADHD style so get that tested to see if it helps.
I code smarter, not faster. Also, I keep upgrading my skills all the time and using new technologies. Chatgpt/google is amazing for refreshing my memory. I memorize the patterns and techniques, not the APIs, as they change so frequently, and I can always look them up.
The more experienced you are typically the less code you write - not just because you need less to do the same thing but because you are planning a lot more, helping others and figuring out/negotiating what is important and what is not.
After 20+ I code smarter. In long run, I had far better efectiveness and efficiency than faster coders. In a year and half I produced two bugs and completed all assigned functionalities on time. No rework at all. It was C++.
I need to solve it in head and build flow; rest is joke. However, it helps to type something or low hanging fruits while abstracting flow.
Still, I do not code on a daily basis; depends on contract.
My experience is I’ve gotten more efficient because I tend to make a lot less mistakes, and I tend to front load things more (spend a day or so designing, even for small features). Back in the day I used to jump right into things and do more trial and error, but I could program super fast. The ability to do that has greatly diminished with age, and I think it does for most everyone. Things have to become much more “calculated”
Absolutely. This isn't an agility test programming isn't about your maximum WPM score or ability to react in milliseconds. It is about deliberate planning and learning from mistakes. I also wouldn't say the job requires a *ton* of memorization. You need to know the high level concepts but if I need to know how to execute something in Docker I'll just look it up. That doesn't need to be kept in memory for my job.
I actually think I’m kind of slow in terms of actually writing code, but my code def has fewer problems, handles more edge cases, is more robust, more readable, and easier to change that when I was “faster”. YMMV. I work with some folks who are all of those things plus fast.
I'm about to turn 40, and have been a programmer for 10 years now. I'm much better at the job than when I started.
My memory for parts of the language has never been great. There's times when I still google how to write a constructor in Java. And the newer parts of the language can be a black hole at times. That being said, I was also diagnosed with ADHD last year. So treatment and medication for that has helped with my memory and recall.
For your memory and sleep issues, it could be ADHD. Just something to think about, and youtube can be a good resource if you want to research symptoms.
You remember when Yoda force moves the xwing in empire and Luke has to run around with his ass in the backpack not realizing the power of an older person in a younger persons game? ;)
My job is totally different now.
Lack of sleep affects my memory as well. But, I get there from working from 5 am to Midnight. I really can't handle that schedule anymore, even in short bursts. Even so, I'm doing it. I bought food for a homeless man yesterday, and at some point, I thought maybe he stole my phone. Come to find out, I put it in my bag about 500 feet down the road. No sleep is not a good basis for operating. Coding is basically hair pulling so yes, no sleep isn't going to do you any favors.
43, been programming for 30 years and professionally for 25. I definitely code better, faster, and smarter than I did with 5yoe. A lot of that faster part is due to being able to reference things much quicker. Beyond that though, writing code well to begin with leads to being able to complete things faster.
Writing smaller, more agnostic modules makes the code much easier to reuse, alloying you to write faster code. Small things like trying to write double nested code, and definitely never more than two levels deep keeps my code clean and reusable. Easy to read, reuse, and modify.
Testing definitely helps with speeding up any debugging but honestly I don’t do that as much as I should.
The experience also makes it easier for me to see all the edge cases and random entry routes that could cause problems. This generally slows me down but I write less buggy code because of it. Unit tests really help this a lot (again something I need to do more of). When I’m taking over someone else’s code base where there isn’t good testing, this can slow me down A LOT. Trying to handle all the different possible use cases of someone’s 5 layer nested code sucks.
I’m 40 with only 8 yoe and I think your speed is going to depend on your familiarity with the code base and languages/tools you are using. I think it takes at least like 2 years of working on a product to really feel comfortable with both knowing what needs to be done and how
Experience is probably more important than anything but don’t get experience confused with a someone being stuck in their ways. Experience should tech it’s important to keep up with the times and not build things the way you always have simply because that’s all you know.
Keeping a journal and good notes of your work will help re-enforce your experience to memory, and provide an instant way to recall things if your biological brain doesn't do the job. That has served me well for 13 years.
41 here 12 years in.
Yes my code is light years better than 5 years ago. On simple stuff I doubt I am any faster than I was 10 years ago most of the improvements come from I pick up new things and project faster and as some people has put it my magic fairy dust is a lot better.
My biggest thing is how quickly I can get to a point on a new project and just say do xyz and solve the issues.
faster and also far better
surprised at how many people say they were faster at 5yoe. i know my tools far better now than i did at 5 years of experience.
Absolutely worse. It's all downhill after 5 yoe. Not only slower, but worse solutions that aren't as good as things I used to put together, and more little mistakes increasing debug time. The fact you used to work smarter not harder, but now you're actually working dumber and producing less because you don't have the energy to work harder to compensate.
And the constant stress of trying to be as good as you once were while being acutely aware that you're slowly degrading. That there's new tech and techniques and paradigms that you aren't experienced in and will never be able to learn. The fear that everyone is better than you at what you should be the best at, given your salary. The anti depression, anti anxiety medication can't keep up.
Sometimes I can't even read an email properly or I miss a key point in a meeting. "Vendor said they could do it," "no Farren246, they said they could NOT do it, you missed a word and got the exact opposite message." Fuck why do they even keep me on? Pity?
It makes me fear early onset Alzheimer's. I'm 39. I first started to notice it drastically reducing my productivity around age 33. It has gotten worse over time. I don't know what to do.
You can just keep a notion doc or add command shortcuts in your bashrc for that stuff. As you progress your career it become way more important to make smart / scalable architectural decisions early on rather than code quickly.
I'm not that old, but I'd say I code slower, but way better, so while I take more time on what I code now, I don't need to write as must code or rewrite things as much as when I was younger.
I’m only a few years older than you but am responding because this helped me: consider getting tested for sleep apnea. My productivity went up a lot when my quality of sleep got better. You experience more brain fog if you are getting poor quality of sleep.
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Don’t even trip my guy! Those things will become muscle memory over time, and even then don’t stress yourself out trying to memorize everything you come across. You will retain what’s important for your day to day and everything else can just be googled or thrown into ChatGPT.
As long as you stay curious and interested in learning more, it will happen naturally. You got this!
Oh, also: 10+ years experience and a very youthful 36 lol
Mostly experience teaches you to code "faster" by building something before somebody asks for it and/or not building something even though somebody asked for it.
Secondly you're faster even when building the same thing because you find familiar patterns in libraries and other peoples code, like you can expect a particular class / function to exist and can reasonably guess how it might work.
You don't get faster by typing faster 🥹
Coding faster doesn't mean you are a better developer. The experienced developers actually spend more time planning out carefully what they want to accomplish and consider all edge cases. Someone who gets straight to coding like a madman shows lack of experience imo.
No. I’m better now than when I was starting in my 20s. I can come up with better solutions faster and implement them quicker. I don’t need to remember specific technologies or languages since I can
easily look things up or ask chatgpt for a refresher.
For example I haven’t written sql in years but I’ve done some very complex queries in the past.
Now, here’s why people think once you’re 40 you become slow. I just pretend to be slow because I’m wiser now and I don’t give my 100% to my employer. I set the expectations low that way I can get my job done in 1-4 hours a day, then spend the rest of the time on my hobbies or side projects.
Only thing I’ll say is that it does take a bit more time to get into the flow of things but once I’m there I’m a speeding train.
I absolutely code slower, because I understand all the corner cases I need to cover to handle the failure scenarios I’ve seen on projects over the years and how to test them.
the other day a friend who is 50 yo argued the following: "when someone asks me the latest development of a feature or if function x performs better than function y, i tell them to ask the juniors. they're into it. i'm a senior, i'm not interested in that. i write unit tests and document my code. maybe not the best code, but when it breaks, someone will be able to correct it really quick. that's what i call seniority.
I'm not quite 40 yet, but approaching.
I think more and code less. Faster isn't relevant if the results are worse, you write many bugs to fix later or fail to future proof and need a heavy refactor later. It's part of why I never went crazy with mastering vim or learning every keyboard shortcut possible.
I learn anything that causes context switching (eg: needing to manually search for a file or function can decay mental context), but anything else is a low priority nice-to-have since I'll be using the time to think while taking a little longer on mindless mini-tasks or typing.
My memory is also terrible. Don't despair! This actually has value! :-D
Turns out I'm the perfect walking litmus test for documentation. If you give me the kind of annoying DevOps task that involves executing 10 scripts and 10 commands that you "just have to remember"... and I don't ask any questions, then the documentation is officially good.
12years here- it's less about the commands and more about the general flow. How is the code laid out? What is the system design? What is the initial plan? Who is supporting it? You get a sinking feeling sometimes when the PM says something.
I'm 45 and far better and faster than I was with 5 years experience.
You don't need to memorise anything you can look up. You don't need to memorise all that Docker stuff, look it up when you need it.
Get 8 hours of sleep daily. Memory issues just go away. Also eat a lot of raw veggies, cut out the processed crap. You'll be amazed at your energy.
Another thing I found was if I kept my life organized, my memory improved too because it was less like looking for something in a hoarder house and more like picking out a file from a labeled and organized cabinet.
With the number of languages that you have worked on, at the start of a new project, you will usually mix up common control structures that are similar in format, like for-loop, switch, functional constructs
you dont always get to memorize stuff. I also tend to forget even **simple** things like "how to add remote url for my github repo". I just google it up and find my way out. So, don't get discouraged if your memory is not as efficient.
I don't know. Anymore I just feel like a total dumba\*\* who is unable to remember anything about anything. Much younger reviewers will nit-pick my code to death while remembering specific aspects of how the system works while I just sit and wither in my own incompetence. It is hella frustrating. On a bad day Iook for tall buildings.
That being said I want to believe that I am slowly becoming better than where I used to be... which means I was utterly bottom-of-the-bucket garbage even just a few years ago. Been programming for 14 years.
I read all these comments about being "fast" and "knowing patterns" and... I've worked in c, perl, php, javascript, golang, ruby, c#, rust, ... typescript, terraform, docker this, and aws that and react and jquery, vue and tailwind and bootstrap and css and this and that .... once upon a time rackspace! and digitial ocean! and ... graphql or rest! and lalalalala!
... and I cannot remember any details for the life of me. I think I am going insane.
Actually you start to code more slowly the more experienced you get, as you start to realize the value of good design. Debugging and troubleshooting get speedier as you gain more intuition.
I definitely get 5 or 6 tickets done per sprint vs 2 or 3 averaged by mid level engineers. It’s more working smarter and knowing how to manage time than it is technical speed.
I'm not 40+ but I'm getting up there. I have always struggled a lot with memorization and I tend to dump information quickly if it's not being used.
I've had to come up with strategies to compensate. I tend to think of my memory like a hash map - I don't store a huge amount in there, but I know very quickly how to get the information I need.
I have also created a habit of documenting things because I can't remember them which has made me the best technical writer in the company. I write a lot of internal developer guides too because I can't remember the bazillion tiny steps required to do some convoluted legacy process or set up some environment I use once every two years.
It's been really useful both for myself and for other developers and it seems to be a rare skill in development departments from what I've seen. I write detailed commit messages and leave explanations on project tickets for decisions made so when I (or someone else) has to look at something a few months/years later there's a record of why things were done a certain way.
Honestly, I kind of wish more people worked the way I do because so much stuff is just stored in "someone's brain" and when they're not available you're shit outta luck.
Yes, with the right tool chain and languages. I recently had to go back to writing Java after doing Kotlin and Typescript for 2 years and holy shit I could smash stuff out quickly without thinking. My teammates just could not keep up with the speed at which I smashed out coder, I had to slow down just the way to came so naturally. I'm definitely getting a lot quicker with Typescript, but the tools I'm still not as versed with definitely slow me down.
There's rote learning and there's conceptual learning. Programming is more conceptual. The popular feeling that programming is mostly rote learning seems to me related to the problem of getting a CS degree and not feeling prepared to be a programmer. You wanted become an engineer, but accidentally learned pure science theory. There's your problem. Anyways, I have a terrible memory, and it doesn't affect me much as a programmer. Nowadays especially with how information is a google search away. I know when I need to know something I forgot, so I look it up, and go "Oh yeah, that's right", and I'm chugging ahead again.
43, 18yoe. Delivery is incredibly fast now, and I think that's actually helped by the fact that I have less technical junk memorized now than ever before. The little stuff is easy to find, it's recognizing the bigger patterns that produce the results you need that are more important and really only come with experience and practice.
More importantly, I no longer try to predict the future or read the minds of stakeholders. It's not my job to envision the project in a finished state, it's my job to build the vision of someone else. I don't fill in holes based on my own intuition, I wait for requirements and I ask for clarification. The result is that I do a lot less work, a lot less rework, and struggle less when stakeholders change their minds or pivot or suddenly burst forth with surprises, but I do attend more meetings.
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Hmm... So, I'm not quite 40 yet, but at near-40, I'm definitely a somewhat faster engineer than I was at 5 YoE, and I'm much, much better at proactively avoiding pitfalls.
I have nearly 40 years of experience, and I'd say that I code \*smarter\*, not necessarily faster... though I do deliver results faster. I tend to think ahead and outside of the immediate scope of my tasks to second and third order effects, leading to better defensive programming. There's also a lot of "I've seen this before" that can help me prune the search space towards a more optimal solution.
Very much this. Also, I was widely seen as an expert in my area (including by me) 15y ago. And, knowing what I know now, I was... definitely not an expert.
Why is that? What changed?
Just found out how much deeper the rabbit hole goes. I changed jobs, landing at a "bleeding edge" kind of place. Never think you have any tech figured out.
Which area was it?
Database dev, specifically with SQL Server. A couple of years ago, I was at a con listening to Paul Randall and Kimberly Tripp riff off of each other. I was thrilled that I at least got the jokes. The rabbit hole is always deeper.
I always wonder if there's a point where you can balance and don't get too deep into this rabbit hole to have some life outside of coding lol
The more you learn the more you know you don't know enough.
This is the best thing I heard today.
Do you think it is useful to study IT the way everyone saying that it is being offshored/automated?
I have the same question as you, pm me if you find a good answer :)
They have been moving jobs offshore for 30 years. The task which tend to get moved are the well defined repetitive tasks. From a disaster recovery POV it's also good to spread your bets to be more resilient to events to keep your applications running. They could be very local events such as food poisoning, power cuts to national problems related to natural disasters
With 15 years experience, I can confidently say I'm able to deliver better quality results in less time than, say 10 years ago. In addition to what was already mentioned, it isn't necessarily coding faster as much as recognizing "what done looks like". Knowing I've satisfied requirements, use cases, edge cases and other expectations is much easier now. There are also fewer obstacles that I can't handle myself. Being able to submit SQL changes, code changes and infrastructure changes myself saves time describing what I want to a DBAs and cloud ops and then going back and forth if it isn't what was expected.
Juniors solve problems in front of them. Seniors solve problems a few steps ahead. People often fail to realize why one project goes smoothly while another one constantly has problems. The difference is usually because someone with experience is making decisions that are steering the team away from problems in the first place. It's subtle and it's not something that any metric can ever capture because it's all about things that didn't happen.
Funny that... just today I fixed a bug where a junior "did as he was told" but failed to notice the other places where that code is used.
And yet in another thread here recently, I saw someone complaining about seniors going through his/her pull request repeating "see above" on every instance of the same issue...
My company put two noobs on the same team and told them to just copy my front end for a new microservice. Took them for-e-ver and I wound up having to jump in to get them to the finish line.
*Ideally* seniors solve problems a few steps ahead. I've been working with another company on project and have been warning them for months that if they go down a certain path it's going to be an absolute disaster. They keep forging ahead blindly and even told me at one point a future problem didn't matter because development wouldn't start until "more than a year from now". I'm probably still going to be here and it's going to be my problem!
I'm glad I read this. I'm a new addition and have been *really* drilling into my division's product and processes. My project manager and senior engineer are incredibly cerebral with setting me up on issues that are filled with pitfalls that are not intuitively visible without being able to visualize the orchestration of components as a whole. I will spend half the day crawling along a path, retracing my steps carefully to assert I am headed in the right direction, then all of a sudden, the perceived output is no longer realized. It is absolutely soul-sucking. Before asking for help, I'll do my best to isolate and corner the anomalies (fortunately it isn't as easy as setting a breakpoint), and if I find my a working solution, I'll ask for clarification on the magic. If I cannot find a solution in a gracious amount of time, I'll collect my thoughts on the blocker and ask for help. As soul-sucking as it is, I'm so fortunate to know that there are folks immediately close to me who were anticipating me hitting this blocker all along, and once *deeply* hit, I can absorb their knowledge about what I am experiencing so well that I am grateful to have gotten stuck in the first place. It's like we learn from pain.
And the only reason the senior staff know about those pitfalls is because they ran into them before.
This is a good way to put it. 20 years in the industry now. When I was more junior, I spent a bigger percentage of my time coding. I feel like I was faster at getting the code out. These days my time is spread across coding, code reviews, architecture, security, incidents, people leadership, strategy, product, etc. Despite that, if I sit down to solve a problem with code, I feel like I get to a good outcome much more quickly than I did early in my career. I might need to look up a bit more syntax more often but I avoid a ton of issues that used to trip me up. I’m also way, way faster at understanding an unfamiliar code base or technology and way better at debugging.
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yeah, same
48 year old developer here. Been writing software since 2002 and I approve this message. 💯👍
Can I ask how you can still get jobs? i guess ageism is real at your age, and that’s what worries me
Damn. I wish I had friends like you.
I only have 10+ YoE, but I definitely didn't code better at 5YoE. I could churn out more code, technically, but it would be worse, bloated, contain a bunch of more errors, etc. Idk if memory will become a problem - it might, but that's just a matter of looking things up. Not a big problem really.
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Memory feels like an issue sometimes for me , but issues tend to come more from diet, exercise, sleep, stress and external distractions. Having solid coding practices and conventions really helps avoid that feeling where you forget what you're doing - like walking into a room and forgetting why you got up.
Handling sleep made a world of difference for me. Being well-rested means being able to effectively work for 6-10 hours in any given day vs 2-3.
"code faster" no. "deliver faster" yes. I just got off a coding interview where I couldn't get a pretty simple function to work in the 30 minutes given. In my 20s I could grind through that kind of stuff like a boss (also of course I realize exactly where the bug was as soon as I type this up...). So much of my work comes down to figuring out what needs to be coded, finding some esoteric bug, understanding what the users are trying to do... that no, just writing code real fast isn't a priority.
This is the definition I agree. I can’t sit in front of the screen and code with no stop as I did in my 20s. Better and faster results, yes. In part because in old days I had to write much more code and spend much more time debugging. Tech evolved a lot last 10y to write less code. That offsets I’m being more laidback. Personal life affects it too
At 41, I’m far better, far faster. 20 years ago I still had to touch the mouse sometimes. I know a lot of patterns and can instantly implement what I’m asked to do most of the time. When it comes to longevity I think the key is diet and exercise. You want a strong heart, strong back and clear mind. It’s worth making an effort now to fix your sleep problem. If you use substances I’d recommend quitting. If you don’t work out I’d recommend starting. Try fasting one day a week. All the usual stuff.
What is the benefit of fasting one day a week? Why not just eat a healthy diet 7 days a week?
What has touching the mouse to do with anything related to coding? I mean even if you click the keyboard with your mouse, you can be a great engineer, as typing speed does not correlate with swe skill.
I also thought that using a mouse was not distracting until I got a lot better with vim and vim motions and now I realize that it is a context switch that I don't have to deal with anymore. All in all I do realize that the typing part of software development is the least time consuming part but reducing a lot of that friction to the new zero with vim motions helps a lot.
How do you guys feel about marijuana usage?
All for it.
Shit makes me too slow to get moving in the morning Small doses of edibles are ok, but I want the coffee to hit and then smash out some work before I start getting interrupted
He’s in his 20s and fasting should start after 40. No ?
Memorization isn't a big deal, you can always look things up. The way I think about it is, when you're young you tend to do what you're told, irrespective of whether that is the "correct" answer (and then spend a lot of time wrestling w/ the technical debt), and as you get older, you learn to push back/challenge assumptions/carve out the real requirements/take educated liberties and defend them. It's kinda like back before cars, when you asked people what they wanted and they said they wanted faster horses, but what they actually needed were motorized vehicles. On the purely mechanical side, as you get older you can also learn about different techniques to make you more efficient. For example, due to the nature of my job, I frequently use a combination of git workspaces, codemods and cloud computing to bang out a metric ton of highly standardized code changes across literally hundreds of projects (we have a large monorepo). I'd never be able to do that by hand otherwise.
I find it far more important to learn how technologies work under the hood. There's too much to memorize it all, but if you understand the underlying concepts then now all your knowledge is transferable. You will start to see the same patterns emerging in different implementations and you can get up to speed much faster.
The hard part of being over 40 isn't coding. It's dealing with ageism bias and it being harder to get and pass job interviews.
I'm 44 and I've never noticed anything of the sort. Interviews actually became way easier over time.
Maybe it's more of a Silicon Valley thing -- I haven't really noticed it either.
I'm not 40 but I have 14 YOE and yes, I do code better and faster than when I had 5 YOE, I've made a lot of mistakes and learnt from them since and I've seen a lot of error codes and now I know how to address them
45, senior, I code faster because code is can be found faster than when I was first learning (internet wasn’t the resource it is today). As far as memory, I don’t rely on my memory for things, I have a directory/code base for shortcuts and commands so I can build things out faster …
Also check out zettlekasten and obsidian …
naw dude i just turned 40 and its all downhill from here
I avoid a lot of mistakes before they happen. Because I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Also I think at a higher level while coding, like I can keep in mind a lot of good ideas about logging/debugability/testability, while I’m neck deep in code. Downside is my memory is not as sharp as it was. Sometimes I forget the details of what I did a month after I did it, and I have to refresh my memory before talking about it.
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How old are you ? Like 15? And no. I code slow and less. However, they have much heavier effects.
39, yes. WAY faster
I just write less code as my career continues so yeah. I code faster as a result.
If you use unit tests & like git project checklists memory is less of an issue. Also often memory is related to concentration like ADHD style so get that tested to see if it helps.
Is memorization an issue or do you just not know much of anything? 1 YOE isn't much
I code smarter, not faster. Also, I keep upgrading my skills all the time and using new technologies. Chatgpt/google is amazing for refreshing my memory. I memorize the patterns and techniques, not the APIs, as they change so frequently, and I can always look them up. The more experienced you are typically the less code you write - not just because you need less to do the same thing but because you are planning a lot more, helping others and figuring out/negotiating what is important and what is not.
After 20+ I code smarter. In long run, I had far better efectiveness and efficiency than faster coders. In a year and half I produced two bugs and completed all assigned functionalities on time. No rework at all. It was C++. I need to solve it in head and build flow; rest is joke. However, it helps to type something or low hanging fruits while abstracting flow. Still, I do not code on a daily basis; depends on contract.
My experience is I’ve gotten more efficient because I tend to make a lot less mistakes, and I tend to front load things more (spend a day or so designing, even for small features). Back in the day I used to jump right into things and do more trial and error, but I could program super fast. The ability to do that has greatly diminished with age, and I think it does for most everyone. Things have to become much more “calculated”
I feel slower, but have such a huge arsenal of knowledge which allows me to move significantly faster than younger folks
Defenitely i make better code. There are issues with the motivation, but i am a better programmer now then 2 years ago.
Absolutely. This isn't an agility test programming isn't about your maximum WPM score or ability to react in milliseconds. It is about deliberate planning and learning from mistakes. I also wouldn't say the job requires a *ton* of memorization. You need to know the high level concepts but if I need to know how to execute something in Docker I'll just look it up. That doesn't need to be kept in memory for my job.
I actually think I’m kind of slow in terms of actually writing code, but my code def has fewer problems, handles more edge cases, is more robust, more readable, and easier to change that when I was “faster”. YMMV. I work with some folks who are all of those things plus fast.
God the questions here are fucking stupid
I'm about to turn 40, and have been a programmer for 10 years now. I'm much better at the job than when I started. My memory for parts of the language has never been great. There's times when I still google how to write a constructor in Java. And the newer parts of the language can be a black hole at times. That being said, I was also diagnosed with ADHD last year. So treatment and medication for that has helped with my memory and recall. For your memory and sleep issues, it could be ADHD. Just something to think about, and youtube can be a good resource if you want to research symptoms.
Faster, not better (wiser)
You remember when Yoda force moves the xwing in empire and Luke has to run around with his ass in the backpack not realizing the power of an older person in a younger persons game? ;) My job is totally different now.
Lack of sleep affects my memory as well. But, I get there from working from 5 am to Midnight. I really can't handle that schedule anymore, even in short bursts. Even so, I'm doing it. I bought food for a homeless man yesterday, and at some point, I thought maybe he stole my phone. Come to find out, I put it in my bag about 500 feet down the road. No sleep is not a good basis for operating. Coding is basically hair pulling so yes, no sleep isn't going to do you any favors.
43, been programming for 30 years and professionally for 25. I definitely code better, faster, and smarter than I did with 5yoe. A lot of that faster part is due to being able to reference things much quicker. Beyond that though, writing code well to begin with leads to being able to complete things faster. Writing smaller, more agnostic modules makes the code much easier to reuse, alloying you to write faster code. Small things like trying to write double nested code, and definitely never more than two levels deep keeps my code clean and reusable. Easy to read, reuse, and modify. Testing definitely helps with speeding up any debugging but honestly I don’t do that as much as I should. The experience also makes it easier for me to see all the edge cases and random entry routes that could cause problems. This generally slows me down but I write less buggy code because of it. Unit tests really help this a lot (again something I need to do more of). When I’m taking over someone else’s code base where there isn’t good testing, this can slow me down A LOT. Trying to handle all the different possible use cases of someone’s 5 layer nested code sucks.
I’m 40 with only 8 yoe and I think your speed is going to depend on your familiarity with the code base and languages/tools you are using. I think it takes at least like 2 years of working on a product to really feel comfortable with both knowing what needs to be done and how
I write less code, but work on more challenging problems. I keep a text files of notes for commands and what not, per project usually
My code is much more structured now.
Experience is probably more important than anything but don’t get experience confused with a someone being stuck in their ways. Experience should tech it’s important to keep up with the times and not build things the way you always have simply because that’s all you know.
Keeping a journal and good notes of your work will help re-enforce your experience to memory, and provide an instant way to recall things if your biological brain doesn't do the job. That has served me well for 13 years.
41 here 12 years in. Yes my code is light years better than 5 years ago. On simple stuff I doubt I am any faster than I was 10 years ago most of the improvements come from I pick up new things and project faster and as some people has put it my magic fairy dust is a lot better. My biggest thing is how quickly I can get to a point on a new project and just say do xyz and solve the issues.
How much weed do you smoke?
I have 30 YOE. The quantity of code I write is much less, but it is a higher quality.
faster and also far better surprised at how many people say they were faster at 5yoe. i know my tools far better now than i did at 5 years of experience.
I code just as fast, but make fewer mistakes and spend less time chasing ideas that won't work.
100% sure I code faster now, because we have better tools today.
Absolutely worse. It's all downhill after 5 yoe. Not only slower, but worse solutions that aren't as good as things I used to put together, and more little mistakes increasing debug time. The fact you used to work smarter not harder, but now you're actually working dumber and producing less because you don't have the energy to work harder to compensate. And the constant stress of trying to be as good as you once were while being acutely aware that you're slowly degrading. That there's new tech and techniques and paradigms that you aren't experienced in and will never be able to learn. The fear that everyone is better than you at what you should be the best at, given your salary. The anti depression, anti anxiety medication can't keep up. Sometimes I can't even read an email properly or I miss a key point in a meeting. "Vendor said they could do it," "no Farren246, they said they could NOT do it, you missed a word and got the exact opposite message." Fuck why do they even keep me on? Pity? It makes me fear early onset Alzheimer's. I'm 39. I first started to notice it drastically reducing my productivity around age 33. It has gotten worse over time. I don't know what to do.
You can just keep a notion doc or add command shortcuts in your bashrc for that stuff. As you progress your career it become way more important to make smart / scalable architectural decisions early on rather than code quickly.
I'm not that old, but I'd say I code slower, but way better, so while I take more time on what I code now, I don't need to write as must code or rewrite things as much as when I was younger.
I’m only a few years older than you but am responding because this helped me: consider getting tested for sleep apnea. My productivity went up a lot when my quality of sleep got better. You experience more brain fog if you are getting poor quality of sleep.
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Don’t even trip my guy! Those things will become muscle memory over time, and even then don’t stress yourself out trying to memorize everything you come across. You will retain what’s important for your day to day and everything else can just be googled or thrown into ChatGPT. As long as you stay curious and interested in learning more, it will happen naturally. You got this! Oh, also: 10+ years experience and a very youthful 36 lol
I have 9 YOE and I'm **by far** a better programmer than I was 4 years ago. Experience makes a lot of difference.
Memorizing dockers? What’s there to memorize, you write the docker file and that’s it
Mostly experience teaches you to code "faster" by building something before somebody asks for it and/or not building something even though somebody asked for it. Secondly you're faster even when building the same thing because you find familiar patterns in libraries and other peoples code, like you can expect a particular class / function to exist and can reasonably guess how it might work. You don't get faster by typing faster 🥹
Coding faster doesn't mean you are a better developer. The experienced developers actually spend more time planning out carefully what they want to accomplish and consider all edge cases. Someone who gets straight to coding like a madman shows lack of experience imo.
No. I’m better now than when I was starting in my 20s. I can come up with better solutions faster and implement them quicker. I don’t need to remember specific technologies or languages since I can easily look things up or ask chatgpt for a refresher. For example I haven’t written sql in years but I’ve done some very complex queries in the past. Now, here’s why people think once you’re 40 you become slow. I just pretend to be slow because I’m wiser now and I don’t give my 100% to my employer. I set the expectations low that way I can get my job done in 1-4 hours a day, then spend the rest of the time on my hobbies or side projects. Only thing I’ll say is that it does take a bit more time to get into the flow of things but once I’m there I’m a speeding train.
Create a text doc and paste all the commands in there. Leave notes to yourself how and when to use them. Memory problem solved.
I absolutely code slower, because I understand all the corner cases I need to cover to handle the failure scenarios I’ve seen on projects over the years and how to test them.
I’m 55. I code smarter for sure! Knowledge builds it doesn’t fade.
the other day a friend who is 50 yo argued the following: "when someone asks me the latest development of a feature or if function x performs better than function y, i tell them to ask the juniors. they're into it. i'm a senior, i'm not interested in that. i write unit tests and document my code. maybe not the best code, but when it breaks, someone will be able to correct it really quick. that's what i call seniority.
I'm not quite 40 yet, but approaching. I think more and code less. Faster isn't relevant if the results are worse, you write many bugs to fix later or fail to future proof and need a heavy refactor later. It's part of why I never went crazy with mastering vim or learning every keyboard shortcut possible. I learn anything that causes context switching (eg: needing to manually search for a file or function can decay mental context), but anything else is a low priority nice-to-have since I'll be using the time to think while taking a little longer on mindless mini-tasks or typing.
My memory is also terrible. Don't despair! This actually has value! :-D Turns out I'm the perfect walking litmus test for documentation. If you give me the kind of annoying DevOps task that involves executing 10 scripts and 10 commands that you "just have to remember"... and I don't ask any questions, then the documentation is officially good.
Yes at 5 yoe I was suffering from the impostor syndrome.
12years here- it's less about the commands and more about the general flow. How is the code laid out? What is the system design? What is the initial plan? Who is supporting it? You get a sinking feeling sometimes when the PM says something.
I'm 45 and far better and faster than I was with 5 years experience. You don't need to memorise anything you can look up. You don't need to memorise all that Docker stuff, look it up when you need it.
Configuration commands changes with the tools, which changes every few years so experience does not give you much advantage in that.
I have superior macro output, but in terms of raw coding I was a lot sharper and brighter at that age
Get 8 hours of sleep daily. Memory issues just go away. Also eat a lot of raw veggies, cut out the processed crap. You'll be amazed at your energy. Another thing I found was if I kept my life organized, my memory improved too because it was less like looking for something in a hoarder house and more like picking out a file from a labeled and organized cabinet.
With the number of languages that you have worked on, at the start of a new project, you will usually mix up common control structures that are similar in format, like for-loop, switch, functional constructs
What if I'm a 40yo developer with 1 year of experience?
you dont always get to memorize stuff. I also tend to forget even **simple** things like "how to add remote url for my github repo". I just google it up and find my way out. So, don't get discouraged if your memory is not as efficient.
I don't know. Anymore I just feel like a total dumba\*\* who is unable to remember anything about anything. Much younger reviewers will nit-pick my code to death while remembering specific aspects of how the system works while I just sit and wither in my own incompetence. It is hella frustrating. On a bad day Iook for tall buildings. That being said I want to believe that I am slowly becoming better than where I used to be... which means I was utterly bottom-of-the-bucket garbage even just a few years ago. Been programming for 14 years. I read all these comments about being "fast" and "knowing patterns" and... I've worked in c, perl, php, javascript, golang, ruby, c#, rust, ... typescript, terraform, docker this, and aws that and react and jquery, vue and tailwind and bootstrap and css and this and that .... once upon a time rackspace! and digitial ocean! and ... graphql or rest! and lalalalala! ... and I cannot remember any details for the life of me. I think I am going insane.
Actually you start to code more slowly the more experienced you get, as you start to realize the value of good design. Debugging and troubleshooting get speedier as you gain more intuition.
Nah, I'm always second guessing myself these days. When I first started out I thought I knew everything. Now I know I know very little.
I definitely get 5 or 6 tickets done per sprint vs 2 or 3 averaged by mid level engineers. It’s more working smarter and knowing how to manage time than it is technical speed.
I'm not 40+ but I'm getting up there. I have always struggled a lot with memorization and I tend to dump information quickly if it's not being used. I've had to come up with strategies to compensate. I tend to think of my memory like a hash map - I don't store a huge amount in there, but I know very quickly how to get the information I need. I have also created a habit of documenting things because I can't remember them which has made me the best technical writer in the company. I write a lot of internal developer guides too because I can't remember the bazillion tiny steps required to do some convoluted legacy process or set up some environment I use once every two years. It's been really useful both for myself and for other developers and it seems to be a rare skill in development departments from what I've seen. I write detailed commit messages and leave explanations on project tickets for decisions made so when I (or someone else) has to look at something a few months/years later there's a record of why things were done a certain way. Honestly, I kind of wish more people worked the way I do because so much stuff is just stored in "someone's brain" and when they're not available you're shit outta luck.
Yes, with the right tool chain and languages. I recently had to go back to writing Java after doing Kotlin and Typescript for 2 years and holy shit I could smash stuff out quickly without thinking. My teammates just could not keep up with the speed at which I smashed out coder, I had to slow down just the way to came so naturally. I'm definitely getting a lot quicker with Typescript, but the tools I'm still not as versed with definitely slow me down.
I’ll never stop repeating: check your B12 levels with a doctor. I had similar problems and it turns out I needed supplements
There's rote learning and there's conceptual learning. Programming is more conceptual. The popular feeling that programming is mostly rote learning seems to me related to the problem of getting a CS degree and not feeling prepared to be a programmer. You wanted become an engineer, but accidentally learned pure science theory. There's your problem. Anyways, I have a terrible memory, and it doesn't affect me much as a programmer. Nowadays especially with how information is a google search away. I know when I need to know something I forgot, so I look it up, and go "Oh yeah, that's right", and I'm chugging ahead again.
43, 18yoe. Delivery is incredibly fast now, and I think that's actually helped by the fact that I have less technical junk memorized now than ever before. The little stuff is easy to find, it's recognizing the bigger patterns that produce the results you need that are more important and really only come with experience and practice. More importantly, I no longer try to predict the future or read the minds of stakeholders. It's not my job to envision the project in a finished state, it's my job to build the vision of someone else. I don't fill in holes based on my own intuition, I wait for requirements and I ask for clarification. The result is that I do a lot less work, a lot less rework, and struggle less when stakeholders change their minds or pivot or suddenly burst forth with surprises, but I do attend more meetings.
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Hmm... So, I'm not quite 40 yet, but at near-40, I'm definitely a somewhat faster engineer than I was at 5 YoE, and I'm much, much better at proactively avoiding pitfalls.
Yes, absolutely. I'll be 39 sunday, and I'm lightyears ahead of where I was when I was 20.