Experience is valuable. Years worked is not. I spent most of those years trying new things, switching jobs, changing fields, using different tools languages, and even hopping countries. I've been fortunate enough to have these experiences -- I realize not everybody will get that chance.
It's kind of a hard, or sad situation though. It's not unrealistic that somebody with 10 years of work could have less breadth of experience than somebody with even 3-4 years of work.
Gathering valuable experience requires a concerted effort. This article from a friend of mine goes into detail about this: does practice make perfect
I consider diversity to be extremely important. This relates a lot to learning those underlying concepts. If you don't try different tech, different languages, different domains, you don't be able to find those underlying patterns.
Sticking with one language, one technology, one domain, I think is a guarantee of stunting one's career.
Taking the time to try things, and fail at things, is also important. Failure is a big part of programming, and we need to be able to deal with, and make sense of what happened.
Stress relief is vital. Find a way to relax. Find something else to do. Pushing yourself at programming is hard work on the mind and body. If you don't have a way to reduce stress you'll suffer.
The experience is and isn't. It is probably detrimental to getting a job at a "cool" tech start-up or the like. They just don't see having lengthy experience with a wide variety of technology useful. However, long and varied experience is usually viewed much more favorably in the non-tech corporate world where legacy code is common and having someone on staff who can effectively link old and new is valuable.
As for staying up to date, it's a matter of picking something to learn and developing a personal project around it. If I can, it will be a work project but that's not always possible. The trick is picking which technology is worthwhile to learn. Various tech sites, including this one, are helpful in this area.
The most valuable thing to do career-wise if you don't want to move into management and keep coding is to always be learning new stuff. Don't become stagnant.
How do I keep my skills up-to-date? I can't answer directly, let me try to explain.
Programming consists of a series of skills and concepts. There are specific skills, like Java, and more generic object-orient coding skills. One could know REST+HTTP and OracleDB, or one could understand network protocols, encoding, and relational DBs.
Once we remove all the marketing terms and fancy words, programming has advanced rather slowly and predictably. At some point I started understanding the underlying concepts. It takes less and less effort to adopt new technologies. I don't really need to keep up-to-date, as I can sit down with "new" tech and adapt quite quickly.
I actually find new tech easier to learn than having to go back in time and learn/relearn old stuff like VB6 and PowerBuilder, especially when it involves maintaining legacy spaghetti code.
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We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Do you think 20-year experience is valuable?
How do you keep technical skill update?
What you think is most important for the career?
Experience is valuable. Years worked is not. I spent most of those years trying new things, switching jobs, changing fields, using different tools languages, and even hopping countries. I've been fortunate enough to have these experiences -- I realize not everybody will get that chance.
It's kind of a hard, or sad situation though. It's not unrealistic that somebody with 10 years of work could have less breadth of experience than somebody with even 3-4 years of work.
Gathering valuable experience requires a concerted effort. This article from a friend of mine goes into detail about this: does practice make perfect
Important for career?
I consider diversity to be extremely important. This relates a lot to learning those underlying concepts. If you don't try different tech, different languages, different domains, you don't be able to find those underlying patterns.
Sticking with one language, one technology, one domain, I think is a guarantee of stunting one's career.
Taking the time to try things, and fail at things, is also important. Failure is a big part of programming, and we need to be able to deal with, and make sense of what happened.
Stress relief is vital. Find a way to relax. Find something else to do. Pushing yourself at programming is hard work on the mind and body. If you don't have a way to reduce stress you'll suffer.
The experience is and isn't. It is probably detrimental to getting a job at a "cool" tech start-up or the like. They just don't see having lengthy experience with a wide variety of technology useful. However, long and varied experience is usually viewed much more favorably in the non-tech corporate world where legacy code is common and having someone on staff who can effectively link old and new is valuable.
As for staying up to date, it's a matter of picking something to learn and developing a personal project around it. If I can, it will be a work project but that's not always possible. The trick is picking which technology is worthwhile to learn. Various tech sites, including this one, are helpful in this area.
The most valuable thing to do career-wise if you don't want to move into management and keep coding is to always be learning new stuff. Don't become stagnant.
How do I keep my skills up-to-date? I can't answer directly, let me try to explain.
Programming consists of a series of skills and concepts. There are specific skills, like Java, and more generic object-orient coding skills. One could know REST+HTTP and OracleDB, or one could understand network protocols, encoding, and relational DBs.
Once we remove all the marketing terms and fancy words, programming has advanced rather slowly and predictably. At some point I started understanding the underlying concepts. It takes less and less effort to adopt new technologies. I don't really need to keep up-to-date, as I can sit down with "new" tech and adapt quite quickly.
I actually find new tech easier to learn than having to go back in time and learn/relearn old stuff like VB6 and PowerBuilder, especially when it involves maintaining legacy spaghetti code.