compay

jEdit was my main editor for about two or three years. An excellent and in some ways very underrated project. I see that the original author is here in this thread - if you happen to see this I just wanted to say thank you for this editor that brought me many hours of productivity and enjoyment!

This project is the standard case I use when telling people not to choose project names in a language you do not speak. It means "booger" in Spanish.

I had the good fortune to study with Chomsky as an undergraduate in the early 90's and can confirm much of what the article says. To me he was always kind, accessible and warm, even though I was not a particularly promising student.

This was the first Linux I ever used.

I suspect people would end up getting a lot of repetitive stress injuries from such a device if used with one hand as pictured.

Ok, I'll bite, because I like the Red Dwarf reference in your username.

It's not about just honoring any random person. His work has had a big impact on the tech community. His articles about his daughter's illness and death were extremely well written and stuck a chord with thousands of readers.

I'm 41. I also worry about ageism but so far I don't feel that it has affected me yet.

> Do you have to go into management to continue progressing upwards in pay and influence? I know this isn't the case at some companies (e.g. Google), but is it rare or common to progress as an individual contributor?

That has not been the case for me. I'm currently doing software development for a startup - the same thing I've done my whole career. I do get asked to provide guidance and help for younger devs sometimes, but I don't mind that one bit, it's actually very personally fulfilling.

> Is there a plateau in pay? Is there a drop in pay switching jobs after a certain number of years experience because places are looking for 5+ instead of 20+?

For me, so far no. I'm currently making the highest salary I've made yet in my career. I've been here for a year and a half.

My age has not been an obstacle to finding a job yet; I've had plenty of interviews and offers over the last 5 years and have chosen the places I wanted to work, rather than the places where I had to. It's worth noting that I'm white, male and American, so I realize I'm less likely to suffer from workplace/interview discrimination with US companies than people in other demographics.

> Is becoming a specialist rather than a generalist the answer?

I'm pretty much a generalist web developer, I do backend and front end work, On a nearly daily basis I work with Ruby, Javascript, Postgres, Haml, Chef, CSS, Sass, Shell scripting, etc. I didn't have to become a specialist to get my job, although the fact that I've been doing Ruby for about 10 years did help me get it. I think the answer is, just to be good at what you do, whether that's as a specialist or a generalist.

> Are older devs not looking for new jobs because they have families and want more stability/are focussed elsewhere?

> What are the older people in your workplace doing?

I have two kids, 5 and 2. My coworkers are evenly split between man and women, are mostly in their 30's to 50's and most of them have kids too. A coworker of mine recently returned from a ~5 month maternity leave after having triplets, and we've been flexible about her work hours/conditions because we didn't want to lose her. So we're definitely not averse to having employees with families. I look for companies that have this kind of attitude to work at. It's not as hard to find as you might think; as long as you're good at what you do people will probably want to hire you.

I'm not sure to what extent my company is "typical" but you can at least count me as one "older" developer who is happily still working as a developer, was able to have a family without harming my career, and didn't get pushed into management.

All in all I would say, your early 30's is still young. Statistically you've got more than half of your life ahead of you, likely the best part, too. As we get older I suspect the demographics of our profession will change along with us, and there will be more older people in roles we stereotype as being for younger people. At least that's what I keep telling myself!

Much respect. But please take a vacation some time soon! You've more than earned it.

If I recall correctly, the author of the article linked here apologized for its tone and removed it from his blog. It seems a bit of a disservice to repost it here without mentioning that context.