Staring at the monitor all day and trying to make things work properly has me wishing I'd done like my father and gotten into music.
On one hand our team is moving very fast on this project and covering a lot of ground after only two days. Enough so that it is possible that the MVP will be finished way before we are scheduled to demo it. That's great because we can use the extra time to put in additional features, test everything and take time on styling and fixing bugs. And we can even take some time to put together a nice presentation for the demo.
But on the other hand this project is huge and there is still a good chance that we will get bogged down from unforeseen bugs or other issues. So I am cautiously optimistic at best. But I have to give credit to my team for kicking more ass than an 8-legged Chuck Norris. Meanwhile I am trudging through the react-google-maps package like a really bad episode of Double Dare when everything gets messy and you are covered in whipped cream and just trying to find the flag inside that fake peanut butter sandwich. But each day I move forward a little bit at a time so I hope to keep that momentum going.
For some reason the topic of ageism got into my head today.
It had nothing to do with anything from class. But for me it is a real concern. I'll be entering the tech industry at the age of 41. And for a lot of employers I might be considered only a little bit safer than toxic waste. I'm a dinosaur who doesn't know anything about the internet. What company really wants to invest in a guy who is probably going to die from old age soon anyways? I'd probably want to put classic rock on the office radio and bore people with stories about "how it used to be".
Sounds ridiculous when you see it written out. At least I hope it does.
Hopefully as the barriers to entry lower and more people learn how to code, this stigma will disappear. And I'm not just talking about employers hiring older candidates. I'm talking also about older people who automatically disqualify themselves as being "too old" to learn programming. Or people who automatically assume it will be too difficult to learn a new thing and live out their days wondering about what could have been. Learning JavaScript is no different than learning C++, or Spanish, or needlework, or scuba diving, or any other discipline. With the right attitude, hard work and perseverance anyone can become talented in a field. Whenever I hear someone over the age of 30 ask if they are too old to get into coding I have to laugh to myself. And then I tell them to 100% go for it if its something they really want to do.
You only get one shot at life, and just like programming a to-do list in React there are countless number of ways to do it. So make one that works for you.
Although I do find it funny that, as a butler I sometimes found it hard to get respect from guests because I looked younger than what the stereotypical butler should look. And soon I might be fighting for respect from programmers because I look older than what the stereotypical developer should look.
