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I've myself been programming since I was 11, so 33 years and counting for me. Professionally for 29 years, since landing my first full-time software development gig at 15
The work has never been boring: bootloaders, kernels, device drivers, compilers, interpreters, virtual machines, graph databases, query engines, blockchains, tactical robotics, hundreds of libraries in dozens of languages, and many a website and app
Recently, a twenty-something friend expressed surprise that I'd managed to adapt to the new way of working, herding instead of hacking. I was somewhat taken aback by his surprise, until I realized that he couldn't really have a personal intuition of the sheer immensity of the change that already took place in computing over the past 40+ years
There haven't existed many other professions with the rate of change that software engineering has been subject to. The only constant has been change, and a substantial portion of the work has been continuous learning, every year and every day
To a first approximation, then, those of us who make it to becoming graybeards in our field have already passed through a harsh filter that weeded out anybody constitutionally ill-suited to riding the curve. And what a wild ride it's been, and that was just the prelude!
Personally, this year has seen the single largest change to my own way of working for decades, but the magnitude of that change is still less than that of the previous three decades put together. And as a fan of individual superempowerment, nothing makes me happier than gaining a more powerful lever with which to move the world
May we all aspire to Alan Kay's neuroplasticity at age 85+ and be inspired by his continuing efforts to rebuild computing from the ground up. Remember, the best way to predict the future is to create it!
The work has never been boring: bootloaders, kernels, device drivers, compilers, interpreters, virtual machines, graph databases, query engines, blockchains, tactical robotics, hundreds of libraries in dozens of languages, and many a website and app
Recently, a twenty-something friend expressed surprise that I'd managed to adapt to the new way of working, herding instead of hacking. I was somewhat taken aback by his surprise, until I realized that he couldn't really have a personal intuition of the sheer immensity of the change that already took place in computing over the past 40+ years
There haven't existed many other professions with the rate of change that software engineering has been subject to. The only constant has been change, and a substantial portion of the work has been continuous learning, every year and every day
To a first approximation, then, those of us who make it to becoming graybeards in our field have already passed through a harsh filter that weeded out anybody constitutionally ill-suited to riding the curve. And what a wild ride it's been, and that was just the prelude!
Personally, this year has seen the single largest change to my own way of working for decades, but the magnitude of that change is still less than that of the previous three decades put together. And as a fan of individual superempowerment, nothing makes me happier than gaining a more powerful lever with which to move the world
May we all aspire to Alan Kay's neuroplasticity at age 85+ and be inspired by his continuing efforts to rebuild computing from the ground up. Remember, the best way to predict the future is to create it!
Intoxicating.View quoted post on X
I’ve been programming for 45 years, since so was 10. I’ve been a pro game coder for 33 years. Everything from hand coded assembly to UE 5.8. The paradigm shift to agentic coding is intoxicating. It is the biggest productivity jump I have ever experienced.
