genedangelo (u/genedangelo)

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

artsyca · 6 years ago

Sir, when you were first starting out what was the standard dress for coders and how have you seen it evolve over the years?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

When I started out, business casual was the norm, just as it is today. A big difference was that many of us had "pocket protectors" where we carried our pens, pencils and slide rule. You may have seen those in some movies as a distinguishing feature for nerds.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

dleslie · 6 years ago

Do you consider what you do to be programming? How does it compare to, say, hand-writing C?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

There is no doubt what I do is programming. It's similar in some ways to SQL, but the tool I use enables me to implement much more complexity than possible in plain SQL. It actually enables a lot of the functionality available in a procedural language like C, but within a structure built around database manipulations and joins. In this way it breaks the bounds of memory constraints and becomes a big data programming language. Admittedly, I don't have to type out individual commands, but that's a good thing. The logic is the same, but the development time is much less. It enables you to concentrate more on the algorithm design while the command syntax and other minutiae are handled in a much more efficient (and maintainable) manner.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

dang · 6 years ago

(I'm a moderator here. Welcome to HN!) Because you're likely to get a flood of comments and questions overnight, I've switched an alpha feature on for your account that will highlight new comments that have appeared since you last viewed the page. They'll show up with a colored bar to the left of the comment. The feature doesn't work perfectly yet, but hopefully it'll help you keep track of what's been posted since you last looked. Note that the colored bars will disappear each time you refresh the page.

Good luck and thanks for a great post!

(Anyone else who'd like this alpha feature turned on for their account is welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll be happy to.)

genedangelo · 6 years ago

I haven't been able to find the colored bar, maybe because of refreshes, but let me suggest you use something that is searchable. That way you could use CTRL-F and then jump from one to the next. Right now, I'm searching for " min" (note the space) to find the most recent posts, and "1 hour", "2 hour" etc. to find older ones.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

bitcoinmoney · 6 years ago

Curious what is your salary? Can you share?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

I wouldn't mind sharing, but I don't want to take the chance that someone in my company could be reading this. I started in 1963 at $1.55 an hour, which was actually pretty good back then. It's mostly been increasing, except for several years when I was self-employed. Now it's more based on my domain knowledge in healthcare fraud detection than on my seniority and skills as a programmer.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

1970-01-01 · 6 years ago

Serious question: How do you sit and type? What chair and what angle has worked best for your back and neck all these years?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

I should also mention that I recently bought a Flexispot stand up desk converter. So now I can stand up and work when I want to. It only accommodates two of my monitors, but that's all I really need anyway.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

mikadel · 6 years ago

In my company, we can get "Senior Developer" title after 3 to 4 year experience.

What your current title?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

My current title is Director of Analytics Innovation. But I am an individual contributor - I don't have anyone reporting to me.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

millstone · 6 years ago

Thank you, this is a wonderful post! Please share more of your story. (Write a book, please).

I would love to hear answers to the following:

1. What ideas proved useful throughout your career, and what ideas did you change your mind about?

2. What are your hobbies? Do you still program in your spare time - if so, what? Or do you find other outlets?

3. What went into the decision to go back to school? Did you get the PhD? If not, did you get burned out, or what lured you away?

4. What were the Big Ideas in software over your career that didn't work out? Any that were better than expected?

5. General successes/regrets/advice for these readers!

genedangelo · 6 years ago

That's a lot of questions, but let me take a couple. I got my Master's degrees in the early 1970's, when we used something called a "slide rule". In 1990 I went back to school to update my skills and expand my knowledge into artificial intelligence, which I had become enamored with. Unfortunately, I didn't finish my PhD (big mistake!) because in 1995 I jumped on an opportunity to join a company that had this amazing software that enabled very advanced analytics on big data (except it wasn't called "big data" back then). The software was called HOPS (for Heuristic Optimized Processing System) and I still use it today to develop custom machine learning applications among other things. I went back to school again in 2016 to fill in some gaps so would qualify as a real "data scientist" - the latest craze. I will say that HOPS was and is the biggest idea in software that hasn't worked out - at least not commercially. It's a system that is great for data scientists working on big data and enables them to do their own programming with minimal effort. I'm still hoping HOPS will take it's deserved place in the world of software development. It will be a great loss if it doesn't! It's one reason I'm holding on - to prove the exceptional things that it enables and prevent it from being tossed into the trash bin of history.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

wwweston · 6 years ago

Periodically there are questions here about dealing with burnout and learning to cope with technological change/churn. Someone who's been doing it enthusiastically for over half a century sounds like exactly the kind of person who could offer advice on that. Do you have any?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

The one thing that comes to mind is to avoid the "hammer looking for a nail" syndrome. I see this all the time, especially in academia. Rather than worry about learning all the latest stuff, concentrate on solving the problem at hand in the simplest and most effective manner. If that requires you to learn new things, then that's a great time to expand your repertoire - working on a specific problem. Of course you have to strike a balance, but mainly concentrate on solving problems rather than being up-to-date on all the latest stuff and trying to find the proverbial nail for your new hammer.

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

satvikpendem · 6 years ago

What do you think about all of the advances that happened in your time, especially with what machine learning is capable of these days (fully artificial human faces, for one)?

Any advice (technical or life) for us younger people?

genedangelo · 6 years ago

I think someday we will be able to duplicate the basic brain of an infant in a computer. Don't forget all the information is in our DNA and there's not that much innate knowledge - most of the infant's brain relates to the amazing capacity to learn. Someone will then take one home and train it like a human baby. It will become so close to a human that it will spark debates about whether it has self-awareness and whether it should have human rights. I regret I won't be around to see it, but who knows - maybe I'll be back :-)

genedangelo commented on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting? · Posted by u/genedangelo

karmakaze · 6 years ago

How much exercise, and have you always been physically active?

[I'm more than halfway to your experience but definitely missing this aspect.]

genedangelo · 6 years ago

About 1 hour in the gym 4 times a week with a mixture of anaerobic and aerobic always setting goals and constraints on my heart rate (using a Polar monitor). At least that is what I was doing until about 2 years ago, when my personal life changed for a number of reasons. Now, I mainly concentrate on walking 3 or 4 miles a day.