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If you aren't curious about the world of programming and other related technology areas then your programming career isn't going to last. Most of the people I knew who got Computer Science degrees when I was in college no longer program anything; they lost interest, or stopped learning and eventually got run over by the new technology steamroller. Do you still want to be coding at 50?
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"If you want to be a programmer at 55 ... you can't ever lose the hunger to know more, know better and know simpler."
FTFY.
/ravi
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I'm 57. I retired at 56, but I still love to code. If anything, my lack of interest in becoming a manager probably reduced (or eliminated) promotability but I am happier for it.
I work on public domain stuff now...
... and every day I smile quietly to myself.
--
Harvey
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I'm 56 and still coding, with no tangible end in sight. I am not exactly what you would call "good with people", so I'll probably never be a manager.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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I am reasonably certain that I cannot foresee any other career than programming for myself. A programmer lives and dies by his/her code. There is so much to learn and know, I think I would need 50 more years after turning 50 to know atleast 50% of what I want to know. My rule of 50! 
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I know people in their fifties/sixties still coding and why not? You don't suddenly lose the ability to code at 50; if anything you get better with age. I'd rather employ an older geek than a young one fresh out of college: too much training required and not enough time to wet-nurse them through the corridors of corporate life.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
nils illegitimus carborundum
me, me, me
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On October 27, 2010 I wrote a blog post about the “57 Things I Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies.” This past week while I was in Tokyo for meetings with potential partners for Fab, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on startups. The discussion quickly turned to those 57 things. Amazing. Thousands of miles away and two years later, people still want to talk about those 57 things! As the questions came in, I realized that my 2010 list was great for what I had learned as of 2 years ago, but it also was in desperate need of an update to include what I’ve learned more recently, especially as we’ve pivoted from fabulis to Fab in 2011 and then scaled Fab to more than 7.5 million registered users, 7500 supplier partners, 600 team members, and a run-rate of more than $150M in sales in just 15 months. Change the world. Do something meaningful. Make a difference.
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Something very, very interesting is happening with Voyager 1, the human probe that’s the very farthest from Earth. New data from the spacecraft, which I will discuss below, indicate Voyager 1 may have exited the solar system for good. If true, this would mark a truly historic moment for the human race — sending a spacecraft beyond the edge of our home solar system. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve.
modified 7-Oct-12 16:14pm.
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Looks like a cut and paste fail.
Just sayin'.
m.bergman
For Bruce Schneier, quanta only have one state : afraid.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. -- Voltaire
In most cases the only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment. -- Marc Maron
I am not a chatbot
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Thanks for the heads up, Michael. Fixed.
Director of Content Development, The Code Project
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m.bergman
For Bruce Schneier, quanta only have one state : afraid.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. -- Voltaire
In most cases the only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment. -- Marc Maron
I am not a chatbot
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I find it really hard to watch baseball nowadays because the game moves so slowly, but I do still like to look at statistics and standings. The standings in Yahoo! Sports include a figure that was uncommon when I was a kid: the teams’ run differential, the difference their runs scored and runs given up. I decided to see how well a team’s run differential predicts its final record. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it throws an exception.
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Who Made That Escape Key?[^]
"Why "escape"? Bemer could have used another word - say, "interrupt" - but he opted for "ESC," a tiny monument to his own angst. Bemer was a worrier."
/ravi
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Quote: “There’s something nice about having a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here key.”
Agreed
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Brings back memories of TECO - Text Editor and COrrector. A single ESC meant to exit text insertion mode and return to command mode. Hitting the ESC key twice in a row signaled TECO to execute the command you just typed.
TECO was a very powerful and dangerous editor. Powerful because almost every key on the keyboard was a valid command. Dangerous because it was a pure interpreter that only stopped executing commands when it either encountered an error or completed executing all the commands, combined with almost every key being a valid command, a minor typo could, and often did, make a huge mess of whatever you were editing.
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I remember TECO! Never used it, though. Used SOS for a while then switched to EDT, and later LSE. IIRC, TECO and Emacs had a lot in common. They were both so powerful, it was rumored you could use either editor to fry an egg. 
/ravi
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Ravi,
TECO was implemented on almost all the DEC operating systems. I liked it because it didn't matter whether I was using RSTS, RSX, RT11, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, or VMS, it was still pretty much the same editor. You must have encountered it on VMS. I believe there was even an implementation for Windows.
Yes, TECO and EMACS are similar in philosophy.
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Yes, I saw it in the early days of VMS (2.0).
/ravi
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I dunno, my experience has been the use of the Esc keycode to start a series of device command characters, you know, Esc Sequences? Something that is considered FM (not frequency modulation, F**king Magic) nowadays.
Many have been the times my employers have snagged me to create them because they had no idea what they were or how to use them.
Before WYSIWYG, if you wanted bold or italics, you had to embed esc sequences in the character streams to the printers. Or to generate barcode, or have a printer connected to a terminal and you wanted something printed instead of displayed on the terminal.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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BrainiacV wrote: I dunno, my experience has been the use of the Esc keycode to start a series of device command characters
I think we're both old as dirt. 
I did a lot of hacking using ESC codes on the VT100, VT102 and VT50 (graphics terminal). I still remember ESC[K (erase to end of line) and ESC[2J (erase entire line without moving cursor), ESC[H (move cursor to start of line, and other equally (now) useless information.
/ravi
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As my grandchildren say, "No confession, no case."
No, wait..
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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If the astronauts in “2001: A Space Odyssey” had an ESC key, Dennerlein points out, they could have stopped the rogue computer Hal in an instant.
A nice reminder that robots must have an Esc button also.
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