(Replying to PARENT post)

programmers actually need to think sometimes. the jobs mentioned are more routine and rely on soft skills and experience a lot. I do not mean any disrespect by that. mathematicians are also best when they are young, but unlike programmers work in academia and get to teach until retirement, whereas programmers get replaced.
👤timwaagh🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

> mathematicians are also best when they are young

This guy springs to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Babai

Because, yeah, programmers and mathematicians don't actually need any experience, they can just think everything up on the spot!

I also wonder how you imagine that other professions gain their experience, if they don't need to think.

👤js8🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I'd hope that my doctor "need[s] to think sometimes". Anything less while holding a scalpel in anticipation of cutting me open is downright terrifying.

Same goes, ideally, for politicians and lawyers and engineers.

👤yellowapple🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Are you sure the jobs that rely on soft skills and experience are more routine than other jobs? What experience do you have to support that?

I've found that once you throw humans into the mix, nothing is routine. I think CS schools do their grads a huge disservice by creating the expectation that the coding is the hard part.

There are a lot of people who can reverse a linked list who can't coordinate a huge project, or build a product from the ground up that people care about. If those are soft skills (implying they're less challenging to pick up), why do most engineers only develop them after they're pretty skilled technically?

In my experience, it's not because they're forced to in order to make up for declining mental horsepower. It's because what you're calling the "hard skills" have become routine to them, and they want to do harder things than they can accomplish as an individual contributor. They want to do work that's less routine.

Why label soft skills as "not thinking"? Humans are way more complex than computers.

👤caseydurfee🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Doctors don't need to think? Come on, man.
👤emodendroket🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Yes but aren't probably a good 2/3 of "developer" jobs the relentless pursuit of arranging the chaos into routine? Funnily, is not a "routine" a building block of a programming language??
👤mmmpop🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Can't tell if trolling...
👤altano🕑8y🔼0🗨️0