I'm 59, still coding, author of innovative programs. Bounce Metronome Pro and Tune Smithy
Started coding with punched cards back in 1971-2. Certainly you've got things a lot easier as programmers nowadays.
Was on punched cards before university, working for a year in Culham labs - and didn't actually see the computer, just the punched card machines and the operators who took the stacks of cards to feed into the machine. We did have a programmable graphics plotter in the lab.
At university everything was on paper tape at first - and that was when the PDP 11 miniprocessor was an advanced machine - not that I had too much to do with computing at that point, was studying pure maths
.
Then had a big gap hardly any programming, but did some at university while doing maths, mainly for fun, I suppose keeping active.
Anyway so almost completely missed the whole home computer revolution, was doing pure maths instead and not that bothered about computing in those days, except, eventually word processing when those came along (before then used typewriters myself and put in the equations by hand - or did the text on computer, printed them out but with no equations, again put those in by hand).
The only bit of that which I caught is that i did some programming on my Mum's Armstrad at one point, just for fun, in Logo. I'm not sure which one, but something like this
and did turtle graphics on it in Logo, things like this
That's not Armstrad logo. But gives an idea of the sort of thing, I did lots of stars - feed in winding number and number of points and my program drew the star - or something like that can't remember details. Plus I think I did a Koch snowflake (though that might have been later). So that was fun, computer graphics on a computer..
My next real experience of programming was when I suddenly found myself in front of a Unix X-Windows machine at college (as a mature student, and by this time in my thirties).
It's hard to express now how amazing it was to see all these different windows on a single screen - we take it for granted now - but having stepped from command line processing with punched cards and paper tape and print outs to a multi window interface like this, in one go - was amazing. I suppose was vaguely aware this was going on but had never experienced it for myself. The idea of so many interfaces to different programs, all on the same machine, and multi-tasking on a single machine, was completely mind blowing.
Then went on to end up programming mainly in Windows, started with Petzold's programming Windows
Again not sure which edition it was.
Then ended up doing it more and more, now do it full time.
I don't notice any difference of speed or mental agility, except many things get much easier with experience. I'm a bit of an old school programmer - so I wrote originally in Fortran with need to number the lines on each card - old version of Fortran. No longer program in Fortran, but in C - but in pure Windows C, only use C++ if I have to. Just never needed to learn C++ and find C works just fine for me, that's all, why learn it? I find it over complicated and hides all the details of what's really going on - just because I'm used to ordinary Windows C doubtless.
So - doubtless if I were to start again now I'd have taken a different direction in programming, or might well have.
The only difference age makes - apart from the thing that I started in the early days of computing so probably have certain habits and ideas from those days inform my programming style - is that my eyesight isn't so good, so I need glasses to see the screen clearly and if I need to be sure of things at the pixel level it can help to zoom in on the screen. No slow down in speed of coding so far, and certainly no memory issues, any more than I ever had - always been a bit absent minded.
I think it makes a big difference to keep your mind active. Many mathematicians have been innovative proving new theorems and results right up to old age. Famous example Paul Erdos, very active and innovative as a mathematician, one of the most famous mathematicians ever to pure mathematicians, continued very active and innovative in maths until he died at 83.
As I get older, expect to get physically tired more easily. May well get illnesses that make it hard to think clearly or work, as when e.g. you have a very bad flu. But, unless I get Alzheimers, or some such, don't expect to lose mental acuity.
Both my parents remained intellectually active when old, with my mother starting an undergraduate degree at the Open University in a subject she never studied before, and getting high marks from her tutors, was just on the point of finishing the degree when sadly she died. That was in her late eighties.
Started coding with punched cards back in 1971-2. Certainly you've got things a lot easier as programmers nowadays.
Was on punched cards before university, working for a year in Culham labs - and didn't actually see the computer, just the punched card machines and the operators who took the stacks of cards to feed into the machine. We did have a programmable graphics plotter in the lab.
At university everything was on paper tape at first - and that was when the PDP 11 miniprocessor was an advanced machine - not that I had too much to do with computing at that point, was studying pure maths
Then had a big gap hardly any programming, but did some at university while doing maths, mainly for fun, I suppose keeping active.
Anyway so almost completely missed the whole home computer revolution, was doing pure maths instead and not that bothered about computing in those days, except, eventually word processing when those came along (before then used typewriters myself and put in the equations by hand - or did the text on computer, printed them out but with no equations, again put those in by hand).
The only bit of that which I caught is that i did some programming on my Mum's Armstrad at one point, just for fun, in Logo. I'm not sure which one, but something like this
and did turtle graphics on it in Logo, things like this
That's not Armstrad logo. But gives an idea of the sort of thing, I did lots of stars - feed in winding number and number of points and my program drew the star - or something like that can't remember details. Plus I think I did a Koch snowflake (though that might have been later). So that was fun, computer graphics on a computer..
My next real experience of programming was when I suddenly found myself in front of a Unix X-Windows machine at college (as a mature student, and by this time in my thirties).
It's hard to express now how amazing it was to see all these different windows on a single screen - we take it for granted now - but having stepped from command line processing with punched cards and paper tape and print outs to a multi window interface like this, in one go - was amazing. I suppose was vaguely aware this was going on but had never experienced it for myself. The idea of so many interfaces to different programs, all on the same machine, and multi-tasking on a single machine, was completely mind blowing.
Then went on to end up programming mainly in Windows, started with Petzold's programming Windows
Again not sure which edition it was.
Then ended up doing it more and more, now do it full time.
I don't notice any difference of speed or mental agility, except many things get much easier with experience. I'm a bit of an old school programmer - so I wrote originally in Fortran with need to number the lines on each card - old version of Fortran. No longer program in Fortran, but in C - but in pure Windows C, only use C++ if I have to. Just never needed to learn C++ and find C works just fine for me, that's all, why learn it? I find it over complicated and hides all the details of what's really going on - just because I'm used to ordinary Windows C doubtless.
So - doubtless if I were to start again now I'd have taken a different direction in programming, or might well have.
The only difference age makes - apart from the thing that I started in the early days of computing so probably have certain habits and ideas from those days inform my programming style - is that my eyesight isn't so good, so I need glasses to see the screen clearly and if I need to be sure of things at the pixel level it can help to zoom in on the screen. No slow down in speed of coding so far, and certainly no memory issues, any more than I ever had - always been a bit absent minded.
I think it makes a big difference to keep your mind active. Many mathematicians have been innovative proving new theorems and results right up to old age. Famous example Paul Erdos, very active and innovative as a mathematician, one of the most famous mathematicians ever to pure mathematicians, continued very active and innovative in maths until he died at 83.
As I get older, expect to get physically tired more easily. May well get illnesses that make it hard to think clearly or work, as when e.g. you have a very bad flu. But, unless I get Alzheimers, or some such, don't expect to lose mental acuity.
Both my parents remained intellectually active when old, with my mother starting an undergraduate degree at the Open University in a subject she never studied before, and getting high marks from her tutors, was just on the point of finishing the degree when sadly she died. That was in her late eighties.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
4.8m answer views110.4k this month
Top Writer2017, 2016, and 2015
Published WriterHuffPost, Slate, and 4 moreHuffPost, Slate, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Science 2.0