Great to see an article about this, older people can code and make a valuable contribution to companies. As well as technical skills, they have life experience and usually a degree of maturity which put them in good stead. Not to mention enthusiasm for something new.
A few years ago an older chap (45?) joined our company as a junior developer. Previously he had been a horn player in an orchestra but had an injury to his hands which meant he could not longer play to a high level.
He had self-learnt some web development and over a number of years developed a website/app for the orchestra he played in to help organise the musicians.
Like any other junior dev, he had lots of questions and also lots of learning to do about various technologies and team procedures and practises (coding style, peer reviews, stand ups etc).
I really enjoyed working with him. His enthusiasm, skill, hunger for learning and fun nature made him a joy to have in the team. Also his maturity and care when making changes actually made him better to work with than another junior dev.
Also recently I had a lady over 40 come to my Introduction to SilverStripe development course. While many of the things discussed were new to her having not really done much in the way of development before, she enjoyed the course and has set up a development server with the help of the IT department at her work. We have emailed a few times after the course and last I hear she is really enjoying PHP SilverStripe development.
Anthony has been an explorer of the digital space for over a decade. From transforming start-ups into multi-million dollar organizations, to helping nonprofits solve real world problems with digita...
Great to see an article about this, older people can code and make a valuable contribution to companies. As well as technical skills, they have life experience and usually a degree of maturity which put them in good stead. Not to mention enthusiasm for something new.
A few years ago an older chap (45?) joined our company as a junior developer. Previously he had been a horn player in an orchestra but had an injury to his hands which meant he could not longer play to a high level.
He had self-learnt some web development and over a number of years developed a website/app for the orchestra he played in to help organise the musicians.
Like any other junior dev, he had lots of questions and also lots of learning to do about various technologies and team procedures and practises (coding style, peer reviews, stand ups etc).
I really enjoyed working with him. His enthusiasm, skill, hunger for learning and fun nature made him a joy to have in the team. Also his maturity and care when making changes actually made him better to work with than another junior dev.
Also recently I had a lady over 40 come to my Introduction to SilverStripe development course. While many of the things discussed were new to her having not really done much in the way of development before, she enjoyed the course and has set up a development server with the help of the IT department at her work. We have emailed a few times after the course and last I hear she is really enjoying PHP SilverStripe development.
You are never to old to learn a new skill. The human mind is an incredible tool.