For people to keep learning especially programming
When I was at the Apple Developer Academy, I worked with one of my team members, an iOS Developer who was 59 years old.
I’ve read lines of code and worked with many programmers. When I worked with him, I was surprised that the code he wrote was very clean and neat, even though his last coding experience was many years ago.
He is also very diligent in applying the tech collaboration guideline that I have created. This is very different from some of the young developers I know.
I remember when I was a talent acquisition manager. At that time, a middle-aged man applied for a developer position. His technical test results were very good using Java.
Unfortunately, at that time we didn’t need a Java Developer, so we didn’t accept him even though he was eager to learn javascript. It was indeed a tough decision for us, especially my Hiring Manager.
Another story is when I was still working in Bali. My middle-aged ojek driver said that he was a VB programmer back then. We were talking about new programming languages and frameworks that really hypes these past years. I’ve also offered him some coding courses I’ve bought from Udemy because he really wants to learn coding again especially in web development in his spare time.
They make me reflect that age doesn’t matter for people to keep learning, because I am always concerned about the future of young people, especially women, but I forget that programming is something that any person regardless of age can learn and I believe there are so many middle-aged people out there who are really passionate about programming and really excited to learn more.
So… instead of labelling them with Boomer this Boomer that, why don’t we approach and tell them that we can learn from each other. Maybe I can open a free coding class again, especially for middle-aged people.
Do you know any or are you middle-aged people who code?
