How many years can you work as a programmer? In this magical land of China, many people say that they can only work until they are 30 years old, and then they need to transform.
In many interviews, I asked candidates about their future plans and heard that many candidates said that programmers are a youth. Because most programmers believe that programming can only be done until 30 years old, at most 35 years old.
Many times I have the urge to argue with them, but then I think about it, because you can’t help those who just want to stay in the bottom of the well and have a closed mind and want to take shortcuts .
Today, we are going to talk about this old topic again, because I saw a paper, but there will be many people who will find various reasons to prove that the paper is wrong, it doesn’t matter, I will send this article For those who are like me who are prepared to persevere in technology and programming.
paper
First, let’s take a look at a paper "Is Programming Knowledge Related to Age?" (PDF link: https://people.engr.ncsu.edu/ermurph3/papers/msr13.pdf). Patrick Morrison and Emerson Murphy-Hill from the Department of Computer Science at Carolina State University did some data mining on StackOverflow.com users. (We know that the data on StackOverflow.com is public, anyone can use it for analysis and statistics, so the authenticity of this paper is certain)
The data sampling and cleaning conditions are as follows: (The full amount of data is 1694981 users, with an average age of 30.3 years old)
- Users between 15-70 years old (users in this age group are called "Working age"), of course, many users do not enter age, these users are filtered.
- Users have answered questions in 2012. Because StackOverflow has twice the quality of questions and answers in 2012, it can better reflect the true level of programmers.
- Reputation is between 2-100K. (Note: The reputation of StackOverflow users is recognized by the society and is a hard currency for interviews and recruitment. It is more valuable than university credits)
The above conditions filter out a total of 84,248 programmers, with an average age of 29.02 years and an average Reputaion of 1073.9 points.
Age distribution map
Let's take a look at their age distribution chart: we can see the normal distribution of programmer age (the high point is around 25 years old, but the midpoint is around 29 years old)
Ability and age distribution map
Then, calculate the reputation of each person every month, so that you can find the real active time of the user, so that it is easy to calculate the real ability of the programmer. (Total Reputation / Active Time), you can get the Reputation he gets every month on average.
Let's take a look at the distribution of programmers' abilities and age groups: (You may be surprised)
As we can see in the above figure, the ability of programmers starts to rise from around 25 years old and does not start to decline until after 50 years old. So, what programmers eat is not a youth meal. Only programmers, programmers who rely on brute force, use physical power instead of brain power, are the ones who eat their youth.
Are older people unable to keep up with new technology
The author of the paper analyzed the Tag, used the more popular technology Tag in the last 5 years, and then used a set of more rigorous algorithms to check whether the so-called "old programmers" could not keep up with the new technology. , That is, these old programmers are not active in answering these new technologies. The so-called old is a programmer over 37 years old. If you are interested in Python, you can add the teacher's WeChat: abb436574, get a set of learning materials and video courses for free~
Get the following table: you can see that old programmers and young programmers are about the same for learning some new technologies, and some items even exceed those of young programmers.
in conclusion
The conclusion of the paper is:
1) The programmer's technical ability can rise to 50 or 60 years old.
2) Old programmers are no worse than younger programmers in acquiring new technologies.
Some of my feelings
Finally, let me talk about some of my feelings:
The experience of foreign companies and domestic companies over the years-the engineering capabilities of foreign IT companies are not necessarily better than domestic ones, but the architecture and design capabilities of foreign NB IT companies far exceed those of domestic companies. The most terrifying Yes, those "old programmers" with super strong architecture and design abilities are still fighting on the front line, and the ability of these veterans who fight on the front line absolutely exceeds 100 general novices.
The feelings of young programmers-the new generation of domestic programmers are too boring. To be honest, for most people, if you have not programmed to 30 years old, you still cannot become a "qualified" programmer. Therefore, it is not that programming is finished at the age of 30, but programming is just getting started at the age of 30. These unqualified programs, BS is not good for this and that is not good all day long, and I like to get it fast and I am so happy.
I am a Benz 4, programming is like mountain climbing, the more people climb up, the fewer people, so there are not many people who have ideas and passion for programming at my age. Basically, they turn to Manager. Up.
In fact, all positions and titles are imaginary, and the company has nothing left. Only technology is hard currency. Moreover, the older people who are still playing programming and technology, in fact, their experience and ability are relatively strong, and they are the backbone. If there are other people like me at this age, please contact.