Just Curious:
One of the things that has dogged me now and again over the last 5 years or so was this idea that at some point you just get too old to program. There is some lack in the brain chemestry that got you where you are that makes management or some other occumation more appropriate. At one former employer, the Sales Manager was a former programmer, and in discussion said, matter of fact-ly, that of course you cannot program after age 40. I have recently heard a few people talking about this issue, and I for myself hope to emulate one of my programming heros, Jim Kyle and continue programming, consulting and writing as long as folks will pay me (I believe Jim is 60+ and was last I checked still in demand in a couple of pretty specialized fields). The thought of being “bumped up“ to a management position is disturbing...
At a recent get together with a number of ASP.NET programmers, it was pretty obvious that the average age is a lot younger than me (and for that matter, a lot younger than me 10 years ago...).
Is it enough to continue learning and growing? Can you overcome the changes in how we think and react as we age with the experience we have gained? Are there many other older programmers out there continuing to work on cutting edge projects?
I have had the T-Mobile (XDA) Pocket PC Phone for several months now, and just recently added Internet access and had the opportunity to travel with it. In general, I am impressed...
The good parts: EMail access was entirely reasonable, and using AIM or MSN was not only possible, but fun. I have IM'ed and emailed in places as diverse as a bus heading out of the Space Needle to a plane waiting for the weather to clear in Newark. I had the advantage of traveling to Seattle, and T-Mobile's network is amazing out there. Of course, 12 miles from home at my mother-in-laws, there is a total dead zone...
Possible hitches? PDA friendly Web sites are few and far between, and an awful lot of them seem to just not work very well. I was looking for the name of a CD, and while I had the address of the Amazon mobile site (thanks to PDA Portal) it just did not come up. I eventually went to Circuit City's regular site (with images turned off) and was able to pick through the site.
Using this device to try and surf the Web has increased my understanding of the issues with accessibility. If sites did not provide alternate text for images, with Images turned off, it was almost impossible to navigate the site. Also, some sites even with alternate text on images were just munged, likely because they did not include height and width of images (though I will be doing some more research on this to make sure that was the problem).
Forget about doing normal kinds of Remote access. GoToMyPC has a new PDA version, but it is impossible to use, in my experience. Fellow blogger G. Andrew Duthie has had some success using the Terminal Services client, but for me, I think I will just hunt out an Internet cafe if need be and use GoToMyPC from there...
Next on my agenda: Working to create some neat PDA friendly content, and then convice someone to pay me to do more...