Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)
Ok I&#x27;ll bite. I had the realization yesterday that I peaked at 25 (I&#x27;m 42). I got my computer engineering degree in 1999 and used to do things like really complicated integrations in calculus, and solve weird 3D intersection formulas for different variables to do change of coordinates on various surfaces for rasterizing before wolframalpha.com was a thing. I look at my invention lists from 20 years ago and they were pretty far out man. Like, they expected a future where maybe we had real multiprocessing with FPGAs or something instead of proprietary video cards.<p>But now, I can barely install a new software stack without this primal sense of exhaustion. I can&#x27;t explain it, but it feels like everything is just.. wrong somehow. Or a little off. Like maybe the profit motive and disruption became the primary motivators instead of progress and scientific discovery.<p>It&#x27;s to the point where I could probably write my own programming language more easily than learn the various idiosyncrasies&#x2F;dealbreakers&#x2F;errata of whatever industry standard language I&#x27;m supposed to use. I find major problems with most any framework in the first 5 minutes, and then spend most of my time after that figuring out how to use tricks with inheritance or pointing the package manager to a forked version of the repo with fixes so that I can extend the framework to do very first principles kind of things.<p>I think what it comes down to, is that I see programming as this giant spreadsheet where data reacts to other data changing, constraints get satisfied or exceptional situations happen. But unfortunately, the most overly hyped languages (like Ruby for example, or Java, not to pick on them) seem to go out of their way to block the developer from staying in a functional paradigm. Almost every codebase I&#x27;ve seen has descended into spaghetti code hell.<p>And unfortunately, that nebulous ball of cruft is where the money is in software development. I&#x27;ve spent the last 20 years knee deep in code so ugly (from assembly code up through SQL) that I feel like a plumber who sees code as.. sewage. There is just so much code, filling every crack where declarative and data-driven solutions would accomplish the exact same thing but with no side effects.<p>But new devs don&#x27;t seem to care to learn where I&#x27;m coming from or why my code might be better in fundamental ways even though it looks a little strange to them. Sometimes in a conversation I&#x27;ll see myself and think &quot;wow, I really do resemble a crazy person&quot;. I just feel too old to begin the training, but too young to be this burned out. I fantasize often about giving up all worldly possessions and moving to an artist compound in the woods.<p>I worry I&#x27;ve just reached the point where I&#x27;m a fish trying to ride a bicycle but I don&#x27;t know of an ecosystem that would value my natural and hard-earned talents for making the world a better place. There&#x27;s just an endless stream of soul-sucking contracts, each more punishing than the one before. All of the money is tied up in the establishment now. No room for creative daydreaming along implausible trains of thought in the universe of possibilities. Just the grind. Always the grind.<p>If I&#x27;m depressed then it&#x27;s environmental, and I feel stuck with it because I can&#x27;t change the world. But that&#x27;s why I learned to code in the first place 30 years ago. So now what? I guess I&#x27;m just curious if any older devs here have reached similar conclusions. And like, were you able to rise above it? Were you lucky enough to start 5 years earlier than me and capitalize on the booms to the point where you&#x27;re independently wealthy now? Or is that a widespread fallacy, that &quot;if I was just a little older&quot; maybe I could have ridden a bubble? Or do you fantasize about being 20 years younger, starting in the world today where you have access to all the secrets of entrepreneurship online and still have a beginner&#x27;s optimism?<p>I think the gist of my melancholy is that I have a knack for solving very difficult problems handily (nobody seems to need that skill anymore) but my short game stinks and I struggle to summon the motivation to do the mundane things (that are in demand). I&#x27;m tired of learning new languages and frameworks because they are each terrible in their own way but collectively the software engineering industry can&#x27;t see the flaws so they inevitably remain.<p>Sorry this was a bit of an overshare but hey it&#x27;s Friday.