Can you keep programming for 50 years?

Today I was listening to DevTalk.pl podcast and its 1st episode of DevTrio talks. In this episode, 3 famous Polish developers discuss the topic of whether you would want to and whether you could be a programmer for your whole career.

I want to have that positive, youthful spirit as a developer.

In the rest of the world, the answer was probably found as programmers have a much longer history. In Poland, the industry boomed after the fall of communism and now the most visible, experienced developer are only 30–40 years old. There are older devs, but not many, and not famous.

There are two questions here:

• Can you be a developer for 50 years?
• Would you want to be a programmer for 50 years?

Three thoughts, which struck me most regarding the discussed topic in this episode.

• Chess players aged 70 can regularly perform better than Andrzej, my boss. In other words, you can be older and perfectly, intellectually capable to beat younger generations. But unfortunately, our industry is not known to be very friendly in terms of keeping devs happy, in good mental and health condition. I am right now 31 years old and I work 7 hours a day only. I am scared when I hear about hackathons and working 16 hours a day. I like DHH’s approach to workaholism and sleep. So, in my opinion, the question whether you could be a developer for so long (if you want) depends very much on how you are treated and whether you have a healthy life or you are becoming closer to being burnt out every year (which I think is easier than most people imagine).
• People need to change themselves completely every 2 or 7 or 15 years depending on their personality. You might enjoy programming but become bored after some time. That’s ok. For some it will come earlier, for others it will be later.
• Programming is not just coding. There are tons of other activities such as prioritizing, meeting, learning, figuring out problems, etc etc, you already know that :) The more various kind of activities you are engaged in, the more likely you might be to keep enjoying it and stay in the industry.

I am Robert and I work for Arkency. We create apps, books and workshops for Ruby and Rails developers.

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