Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Definitely agree - at my last employer, there were 3 of us in our 40s. Their skill set could be best summarised by "the year 2005": Subversion, MFC, and C++03.


I suspect that in 15 years people will be saying the same about K8s, possibly JS if Wasm takes off and I suspect ML will a fairly niche area.


Is "subversion" a skill (unless we're talking about spies ;)? It's just a tool. I've used it. I've used cvs, git and other stuff too. If I had for some reason to work in a company that uses some other tool to handle their code repos, I'd learn it in a month or so (less if it's organized logically). It's like saying "driving a Honda Civic" is a skill - driving is a skill, Honda Civic may be what you're driving right now, and next week you may need to drive a BMW, and being able to do both is what I'd call a skill.


So? Subversion works fine; nothing wrong with it. Are you now a bad developer if you focus on actually getting stuff done instead of spending time migrating to a new tool?


Considering the company is down to its last couple of developers and can't attract new ones because of the old technology stack, it's definitely a problem.


I guess, but those tools alone build powerful fast software, and those programmers are solving problems which translate well to any field requiring problem solving. The software world may change rapidly, but a React / Git stack is no different than a C++ / Subversion stack when both jobs require programmers to solve hard, complex problems.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: