I appreciated this. Lots of solid advice and positive and pragmatic thinking here about aging in the context of being a programmer, and more generally too.
I'll take this opportunity to make a related pitch regarding back pain in particular, which can become more of a problem if you are sedentary as so many programmers are: if you have chronic back issues you owe it to yourself to at least check out Stuart McGill's Back Mechanic (https://www.backfitpro.com/books/back-mechanic-the-mcgill-me...). It's very much in line with this post; in particular the idea that you just have to deal with back pain as a fact of life is--for most people--not the case. Please take a look if you are struggling with back pain. The process he lays out takes work but it's based on solid research and experience and it has helped me tremendously.
Endorsing Back Mechanic as a great book for fixing back issues, at least for my own experience. Referenced a copy after I first threw out my back. Took months of regular McGill exercises to get back to normal (could barely even walk for a week). It was extremely comforting to know that my back pain problems were fixable, and regressions could be solved with more careful adherence to the exercise regime. I am as active as I have ever been 7 years later, and now I understand the warning signs when I have been mistreating my back.
Edit: For the past few years I've also been sitting in a https://qor360.com/ chair when I'm working. I've found I've had fewer warning niggles of incipient back pain during the periods where I regularly sit in this kind of active chair. I could only tolerate it for brief periods at first but the adjustment period was worth working through.
Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility. I am so hypermobile that none of the traditional ergonomics techniques, including physical therapy, work well enough and I have resorted to using a reclining chair. The reclining chair has worked out great and I really wish I had tried it much sooner. I had not considered it earlier because all of the advice I had received was that it was damaging.
I think everyone doubting, saying counter-intuitive etc. is making a spot interpretation of what the term means ('very active sporty person' or something).
McKenzie's ideas helped me greatly with back pain but did not help with my neck pain I got later. After some years I discovered I had trouble in my jaw which caused referred pain to my neck and shoulders. My dentist recommended a bite guard for my tooth grinding, at which point the pain quickly localized in my jaw and slowly got better -- maybe it hurts a bit one or two days a month now.
The simplified version of McKenzie is that you have back pain because you don't have enough flexibility to be comfortable in a neutral position and your muscles are pushing against each other, it's like the pain you'd have if you used one hand to squish the fingers on your other hand. Exercises that stretch backwards like
really help, although my favorite is Lowen's "Bioenergetic arch" which is terribly obscure (can't find it online except for a comment about it that I wrote on Reddit years ago!) like most of Lowen's work
and not "destined to become widely influential" which is too bad. You stand with your feet together and put your arms straight up and then stretch backward guided by the visualization that your whole body is bending along a circle. You can do it in a standing position whenever the pain reminds you you have a problem and not have to get down on the floor.
----
Another "life hack" was that once I had tendinitis in my hands that was severe enough I thought I had to quit programming. I started doing plain ordinary push ups and the problem cleared up in two weeks and has stayed away ever since. Might not work for you but you can't lose trying it.
My wife was resentful the other day about having to lift a heavy treadmill up the stairs for a person who probably won't make a habit of it. My trainer at the gym told me that the treadmill was the most popular equipment at the gym but also the worst. My trainer introduced me to TRX and kettlebells and I felt pretty stupid because I thought kettlebells were something girls used to look like a dancer in a Kardi B video -- they are that, but they were also one of the Soviet Union's secret weapons when they were crushing everybody in the Olympics.
I told my wife that our friend would be better off with something like that and she said "she has back pain" and in my mind the answer to that is that she needs to get stronger, needs the kettlebells more than I do, just she has to start with lighter weights.
PSA: Be careful about doing McKenzie technique exercises! It made it worse for me because the physical therapist didn't do a good enough analysis! I encourage a thorough assessment that includes an MRI review of your spine first.
The link posted above mentions it as well
> Although most patients favor spinal extension, there are, however, patients who favor spinal flexion instead. For these types of patients, the repetitive extension based exercises can possibly lead to peripheralization which is the worsening of distal referred pain from repetitive motion. In contrast to centralization, peripheralization does not carry a good prognosis and is to be avoided. It is thus vital for clinicians to form an accurate assessment of the directional preference rather than assuming a patient will favor extension and thereby proceeding with therapy based on that assumption.
EDIT: Just to clarify further, the potential side effects are not just "pain". In my case, doing a cobra pose causes me to piss myself and lose feeling in my legs. This can be catastrophic to some people. Please folks, do not just go off some rando on social media telling you "X will treat your neck/back pain!". You can end up seriously much worse than you started. You need to SEE what the problem is first and only an MRI and a trained physician can tell you what is appropriate for you.
I just wanted to point out that your preconceived notions about kettle bells are way off. nothing “girly” about them. They have origins in russia and europe actually.
Most people should be doing at least some baseline level of both strength training AND cardio. Working around whatever injuries or anatomical issues they have. There's nothing wrong with treadmills.
I'm a software engineer maybe half the age of the speaker, probably less. But I am already gradually going blind. (No one knows whether I'll reach legal blindness in 5 years or 25, but its presence in my future is a certainty.)
It's striking, if not surprising, how relatable this talk is to me. My biggest difficulties are with contrast and brightness, and it's clear that dropping night driving will be the first major life change required by my degrading vision. Many-- maybe even most-- of the compensatory measures the speaker suggests for dealing with vision loss are already part of my life.
For me, these similarities and others feel very natural and very right, even a little comforting. My eye disease is genetic, with no treatments and no cure, and so part of what it has taught and reminded me is that bodies fail, and the terms of when and how they fail isn't up to us. One of the things I really like about this talk is how unsentimental it is (without being cold, either). Disability isn't a question of if but of when and how-- and that's not a tragic thing any more than the abstract fact of death, either-- it's just a part of nature, of life.
I like this talk because it reminds us that aging, injury, disability, and adapting to those things (individually and collectively) are common threads in human lives. They're something we should know to expect. We may not be fully in control, but we can prepare-- prepare ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our governments, our cities and towns and neighborhoods-- to accommodate the inevitability of various shades and varieties of disability in ourselves and the people around us. Embracing an awareness of the universality of disability can ground us even in the face of bodily changes that frighten and grieve us. We can know they're not the end of the world because they've always been part of the world around us.
This talk may be worth a watch even if you think it's not really about you. :)
There is some good advice, but the way she assumes old people have a lot of money, costs go down because of accumulation of assetes and salaries rise faster than inflation, might not be transferable to everyone in all geographies and generations (only read the slides)
The current crop of old people had money when interest rates started high and ended low, which is far better than the opposite of starting low and ending high. There is a lower bound for interest rates and there is a risk component to the rate, especially for regular borrowers. Now consider that during the period of lowering interest rates the risk temporarily dips lower because in general all asset holders are making money. This doesn’t happen if the interest rates merely stay still, in time the risk component will increase and the rate at which people can borrow will increase along with it.
I’m not sure what the takeaway should be from this, dysfunctions can last longer than people’s lifetimes so it’s not always a sure bet to bet against it. My prediction which I’ve held for a long time is that the economic dysfunction will create civil unrest. The increase of security cost will undermine profitability impares the ability for asserts to maintain their high values and this will trigger a downturn. It does appear to me that we are in the early stages of civil unrest.
There's some solid disclaimers at the start; I don't think it's fair to say she assumes that this is universal advice since she explicitly states that it isn't.
She spends a long time at the beginning of the talk going over all kinds of caveats and disclaimers.
It's honestly annoying how much effort people have to put into saying "this won't work for everyone in every situation, all the time" and STILL someone chimes in "UMMMACTUALLY!" who didn't even watch the talk
I'm a better and faster programmer than I've ever been, though I'm probably un-hirable anywhere that filters by age (almost everywhere).
My problem in my role atm is not skill, it's the competition for bandwidth both inside the role, and outside it (i.e. that I have a life consistent with my age, which has a lot of moving parts itself).
22-year-old-me worked past midnight, but 22-year-old-me sometimes had to because they couldn't draw boundaries, manage scope, manage time, etc. I was smart then too but had fewer hacks burned into memory.
I rarely do late nights now, not because I don't want to—tearing myself away remains excrutiating—but because I can't.
Not because of ability, though I'm sure that's diminished objectivley; but because I have responsibilities which don't mesh with no-sleep or being cranky from lack of it.
I've been a developer for 19 years and never been asked or hinted to "work past midnight". Maybe I'm the outlier, but from my perspective I think your experiences are unusual.
The host is clearly in poor physical condition and many of their concerns are due to lack of proper nutrition , exercise and prescription meds abuse. They appear 15 years older than they should be. Their advice is primarily reactive, and the trivial proactive advice (exercise more) is delivered almost ironically.
Take care of yourself now. Drop the weight, get generous activity, get off the meds and you will feel loads better.
If you skim the transcript you'll see stuff like this:
> [...] a big part of what I want to talk about is things you can do in your 20s in your 30s in your 40s in your 50s that lead towards you being able to do what you want which could be nothing or could be programming in your 60s in your 70s uh in your 80s [...]
Further in she says:
> it's really astonishing the minute you have proof, visual proof to strangers that your body doesn't quite work people assume your mind doesn't quite work.
To her point, she's 63. We have no idea what she's seen in her life, what sacrifices she's had to make to get where she is today, or anything. What I see is that she is doing more about it now than most of us in this thread, and it might pay to look past her "poor physical condition" to see what she is conveying.
Fifteen years older?! You think that woman looks 78? To me I'd put her in her mid-60s. She's 63. She looks like a 63 year old.
I think part of the problem of this talk is that it introduces the fact that older people/people with disabilities are judged on their appearances instead of their capabilities (which, with respect, you have just demonstrated). Then the talk sortof goes off into a "how to age gracefully" direction and abandons that original line of thinking (disclaimer, I only watched the first 30 minutes so far).
I definitely would be interested in addressing the first issue because, as they say, everyone becomes a old and/or disabled (unless like Tom Petty, you're dead).
I don't see the words "standing desk" together in the comments yet. I am using one at the moment and later today I will be sitting. It is important to alternate lest you create new issues IMO.
And if you really want to up your game a treadmill desk has been an amazing upgrade.
If I just live my typical WFH life I am usually hitting a dismal 2k steps a day. Doing two 45 min to an hour work sessions walking at the treadmill desk had me hitting 10k steps without having to devote any special extra time in my day to exercise.
Do you find it's difficult/impossible to type with a treadmill desk setup? That's my largest concern. Even when I'm not coding I spend a decent amount of time doing PRs, Slack, etc.
Yes, 100%. Being immobile is bad, whether you're standing, sitting, or lying down. (Too much strain from movement is bad too, hence RSI for many of us.)
I really enjoy having the flexibility/option of standing or sitting, and IMO a standing desk is one of those purchases that has a 10x payback.
I haven’t seen the submission (video) but I need to shift from my focus from "this is just what it is now" to dealing with problems head-on and mitigating. Also absorbing experiences and knowledge from people who have been where I am at.
"This is just how it is now" (you know the refrain) becomes a self-fulfilling phrophecy. Could most problems simply be avoided and mitigated until a long time in the future? I don’t know yet.
I don’t have the glass half full attitude yet. Right now it’s mostly "I guess this is just how it is now for me rest of my life." That’s more like my current mindset.
What I learned so far, at 45, is that you can't rely on your body retaining capabilities just from you not being completely sedentary, as it was the case for me before.
You get to keep only the abilities, movements that you actively use in daily (or perhaps weekly) life. For example if you don't squat you'll gradually lose ability to squat even if you run a mile every day. If you don't jump, or jump down regularly you'll lose that ability too.
I think it's a good idea to enrich your environment so that you are forced to do the things you'd like to retain. For example sleep on the mattress on the floor to get up from floor level every day. Another idea is barefoot shoes so you don't lose stability and active amortization your feet should provide. If you live in a house with multiple floors and bathrooms always use bathroom on another floor. What's infeasible to implement you'll need to supplant with regular intentional exercise like hip abductions.
I listened through Move Your DNA last year (biomechanics) so this makes a lot of sense.
On the whole it doesn’t seem that bad, at least this aspect. We just need to do better than sitting for 12+ hours. And I like movement. Not being lethargic.
Some things (out of the deluge of information from everywhere) discourage me, like learning that you have been drinking water wrong your whole life or whatever microhabit is ruining your life this week. But I was and am mostly optimistic about the biomechanics stuff. Because there is a ton of potential to do better considering that even athletes can be habitual oversitters.
Readit News
I'll take this opportunity to make a related pitch regarding back pain in particular, which can become more of a problem if you are sedentary as so many programmers are: if you have chronic back issues you owe it to yourself to at least check out Stuart McGill's Back Mechanic (https://www.backfitpro.com/books/back-mechanic-the-mcgill-me...). It's very much in line with this post; in particular the idea that you just have to deal with back pain as a fact of life is--for most people--not the case. Please take a look if you are struggling with back pain. The process he lays out takes work but it's based on solid research and experience and it has helped me tremendously.
Edit: For the past few years I've also been sitting in a https://qor360.com/ chair when I'm working. I've found I've had fewer warning niggles of incipient back pain during the periods where I regularly sit in this kind of active chair. I could only tolerate it for brief periods at first but the adjustment period was worth working through.
Boy, that one comes with a whole lot of [citation needed].
This does not seem intuitive to me. Why would this be the case?
I think everyone doubting, saying counter-intuitive etc. is making a spot interpretation of what the term means ('very active sporty person' or something).
McKenzie's ideas helped me greatly with back pain but did not help with my neck pain I got later. After some years I discovered I had trouble in my jaw which caused referred pain to my neck and shoulders. My dentist recommended a bite guard for my tooth grinding, at which point the pain quickly localized in my jaw and slowly got better -- maybe it hurts a bit one or two days a month now.
The simplified version of McKenzie is that you have back pain because you don't have enough flexibility to be comfortable in a neutral position and your muscles are pushing against each other, it's like the pain you'd have if you used one hand to squish the fingers on your other hand. Exercises that stretch backwards like
https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/how-to-do-cobra-pose
really help, although my favorite is Lowen's "Bioenergetic arch" which is terribly obscure (can't find it online except for a comment about it that I wrote on Reddit years ago!) like most of Lowen's work
https://www.amazon.com/Bioenergetics-Revolutionary-Therapy-L...
and not "destined to become widely influential" which is too bad. You stand with your feet together and put your arms straight up and then stretch backward guided by the visualization that your whole body is bending along a circle. You can do it in a standing position whenever the pain reminds you you have a problem and not have to get down on the floor.
----
Another "life hack" was that once I had tendinitis in my hands that was severe enough I thought I had to quit programming. I started doing plain ordinary push ups and the problem cleared up in two weeks and has stayed away ever since. Might not work for you but you can't lose trying it.
My wife was resentful the other day about having to lift a heavy treadmill up the stairs for a person who probably won't make a habit of it. My trainer at the gym told me that the treadmill was the most popular equipment at the gym but also the worst. My trainer introduced me to TRX and kettlebells and I felt pretty stupid because I thought kettlebells were something girls used to look like a dancer in a Kardi B video -- they are that, but they were also one of the Soviet Union's secret weapons when they were crushing everybody in the Olympics.
I told my wife that our friend would be better off with something like that and she said "she has back pain" and in my mind the answer to that is that she needs to get stronger, needs the kettlebells more than I do, just she has to start with lighter weights.
The link posted above mentions it as well
> Although most patients favor spinal extension, there are, however, patients who favor spinal flexion instead. For these types of patients, the repetitive extension based exercises can possibly lead to peripheralization which is the worsening of distal referred pain from repetitive motion. In contrast to centralization, peripheralization does not carry a good prognosis and is to be avoided. It is thus vital for clinicians to form an accurate assessment of the directional preference rather than assuming a patient will favor extension and thereby proceeding with therapy based on that assumption.
EDIT: Just to clarify further, the potential side effects are not just "pain". In my case, doing a cobra pose causes me to piss myself and lose feeling in my legs. This can be catastrophic to some people. Please folks, do not just go off some rando on social media telling you "X will treat your neck/back pain!". You can end up seriously much worse than you started. You need to SEE what the problem is first and only an MRI and a trained physician can tell you what is appropriate for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettlebell
https://github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_Slides/blob/main/2024/K...
Standard advice on aging. Not programmer specific.
It's striking, if not surprising, how relatable this talk is to me. My biggest difficulties are with contrast and brightness, and it's clear that dropping night driving will be the first major life change required by my degrading vision. Many-- maybe even most-- of the compensatory measures the speaker suggests for dealing with vision loss are already part of my life.
For me, these similarities and others feel very natural and very right, even a little comforting. My eye disease is genetic, with no treatments and no cure, and so part of what it has taught and reminded me is that bodies fail, and the terms of when and how they fail isn't up to us. One of the things I really like about this talk is how unsentimental it is (without being cold, either). Disability isn't a question of if but of when and how-- and that's not a tragic thing any more than the abstract fact of death, either-- it's just a part of nature, of life.
I like this talk because it reminds us that aging, injury, disability, and adapting to those things (individually and collectively) are common threads in human lives. They're something we should know to expect. We may not be fully in control, but we can prepare-- prepare ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our governments, our cities and towns and neighborhoods-- to accommodate the inevitability of various shades and varieties of disability in ourselves and the people around us. Embracing an awareness of the universality of disability can ground us even in the face of bodily changes that frighten and grieve us. We can know they're not the end of the world because they've always been part of the world around us.
This talk may be worth a watch even if you think it's not really about you. :)
I suppose everything is easier when you are rich, including ageing.
I’m not sure what the takeaway should be from this, dysfunctions can last longer than people’s lifetimes so it’s not always a sure bet to bet against it. My prediction which I’ve held for a long time is that the economic dysfunction will create civil unrest. The increase of security cost will undermine profitability impares the ability for asserts to maintain their high values and this will trigger a downturn. It does appear to me that we are in the early stages of civil unrest.
It's honestly annoying how much effort people have to put into saying "this won't work for everyone in every situation, all the time" and STILL someone chimes in "UMMMACTUALLY!" who didn't even watch the talk
My problem in my role atm is not skill, it's the competition for bandwidth both inside the role, and outside it (i.e. that I have a life consistent with my age, which has a lot of moving parts itself).
22-year-old-me worked past midnight, but 22-year-old-me sometimes had to because they couldn't draw boundaries, manage scope, manage time, etc. I was smart then too but had fewer hacks burned into memory.
I rarely do late nights now, not because I don't want to—tearing myself away remains excrutiating—but because I can't.
Not because of ability, though I'm sure that's diminished objectivley; but because I have responsibilities which don't mesh with no-sleep or being cranky from lack of it.
Take care of yourself now. Drop the weight, get generous activity, get off the meds and you will feel loads better.
> [...] a big part of what I want to talk about is things you can do in your 20s in your 30s in your 40s in your 50s that lead towards you being able to do what you want which could be nothing or could be programming in your 60s in your 70s uh in your 80s [...]
Further in she says:
> it's really astonishing the minute you have proof, visual proof to strangers that your body doesn't quite work people assume your mind doesn't quite work.
To her point, she's 63. We have no idea what she's seen in her life, what sacrifices she's had to make to get where she is today, or anything. What I see is that she is doing more about it now than most of us in this thread, and it might pay to look past her "poor physical condition" to see what she is conveying.
I think part of the problem of this talk is that it introduces the fact that older people/people with disabilities are judged on their appearances instead of their capabilities (which, with respect, you have just demonstrated). Then the talk sortof goes off into a "how to age gracefully" direction and abandons that original line of thinking (disclaimer, I only watched the first 30 minutes so far).
I definitely would be interested in addressing the first issue because, as they say, everyone becomes a old and/or disabled (unless like Tom Petty, you're dead).
If I just live my typical WFH life I am usually hitting a dismal 2k steps a day. Doing two 45 min to an hour work sessions walking at the treadmill desk had me hitting 10k steps without having to devote any special extra time in my day to exercise.
I havent experienced any issues so far, what issues could this create for me?
I find that if I sit I end up having lower back pain, my legs end up getting tingly after a while, and I just get sleepy if I'm too comfortable.
Do I actually need to force myself to sit? I'm moderately fit/athletic, standing has helped me with back pain and neck pains.
I really enjoy having the flexibility/option of standing or sitting, and IMO a standing desk is one of those purchases that has a 10x payback.
"This is just how it is now" (you know the refrain) becomes a self-fulfilling phrophecy. Could most problems simply be avoided and mitigated until a long time in the future? I don’t know yet.
I don’t have the glass half full attitude yet. Right now it’s mostly "I guess this is just how it is now for me rest of my life." That’s more like my current mindset.
You get to keep only the abilities, movements that you actively use in daily (or perhaps weekly) life. For example if you don't squat you'll gradually lose ability to squat even if you run a mile every day. If you don't jump, or jump down regularly you'll lose that ability too.
I think it's a good idea to enrich your environment so that you are forced to do the things you'd like to retain. For example sleep on the mattress on the floor to get up from floor level every day. Another idea is barefoot shoes so you don't lose stability and active amortization your feet should provide. If you live in a house with multiple floors and bathrooms always use bathroom on another floor. What's infeasible to implement you'll need to supplant with regular intentional exercise like hip abductions.
On the whole it doesn’t seem that bad, at least this aspect. We just need to do better than sitting for 12+ hours. And I like movement. Not being lethargic.
Some things (out of the deluge of information from everywhere) discourage me, like learning that you have been drinking water wrong your whole life or whatever microhabit is ruining your life this week. But I was and am mostly optimistic about the biomechanics stuff. Because there is a ton of potential to do better considering that even athletes can be habitual oversitters.
Thanks.