I'm 59. I guess that makes me a fossil (geekasaur?).
I really didn't start feeling my technical oats, until I hit 45, or so. I've been an above-average geek, since I was about 21, but I lacked the experience, and the basic habits, that have made me into a much better developer. I started a system (backend tech), at 47, that has become the de facto world standard for a particular demographic, and is now being supported and extended by a highly-skilled and energetic team of younger developers. They probably could not have done the work to get the platform in place, but they have taken my work, and are running with it. They are taking it places that I couldn't go, on my own.
I worked on that system for a decade. Most of that time, it was in production, and I was applying course corrections to it, documenting it, evangelizing it, training people, and being abused.
sniff ... They grow up so fast ...
These days, I'm writing Apple apps (mostly iOS), and loving it. I really enjoy all the learning I'm doing, and finding out that I don't know squat.
I don't bother trying to surf the Jargon Wave. There's some cool stuff, coming out, but I've learned (the hard way) to give it a couple of years (at least) to shake off the fleas. It's very difficult to ship stuff, at the Quality level I prefer, using brand-new tools.
What really gets me excited, is shipping software. That's giving it a pat on the butt, and pushing it out into the world.
That involves a lot of "boring" work. On the project that I'm currently shepherding, We're in the final stages. The release is probably still a couple of months away (at least), but we can see the exit sign, from here. It's been a couple of years.
The work, from here on out, is pretty bland. Lots of work, setting up glossaries, production servers, localizations, accessibility tests, color themes, brand consistency, etc.
And, of course, lots of testing; with the very real possibility of having to put the car up on blocks, and break out the monkey wrench.
It's been my experience that my younger self was less-than-enthused by this part of the project, but I was fortunate to have older peers and bosses, that forced me to walk through this stuff.
It feels great to ship. As I've gotten older, I've come to enjoy this, a lot more.
I wish you luck. I know that one thing that helped me, was to find nonprofits and volunteer Service orgs, and lend my skills to them.
I'm 59. I guess that makes me a fossil (geekasaur?).
I really didn't start feeling my technical oats, until I hit 45, or so. I've been an above-average geek, since I was about 21, but I lacked the experience, and the basic habits, that have made me into a much better developer. I started a system (backend tech), at 47, that has become the de facto world standard for a particular demographic, and is now being supported and extended by a highly-skilled and energetic team of younger developers. They probably could not have done the work to get the platform in place, but they have taken my work, and are running with it. They are taking it places that I couldn't go, on my own.
I worked on that system for a decade. Most of that time, it was in production, and I was applying course corrections to it, documenting it, evangelizing it, training people, and being abused.
sniff ... They grow up so fast ...
These days, I'm writing Apple apps (mostly iOS), and loving it. I really enjoy all the learning I'm doing, and finding out that I don't know squat.
I don't bother trying to surf the Jargon Wave. There's some cool stuff, coming out, but I've learned (the hard way) to give it a couple of years (at least) to shake off the fleas. It's very difficult to ship stuff, at the Quality level I prefer, using brand-new tools.
What really gets me excited, is shipping software. That's giving it a pat on the butt, and pushing it out into the world.
That involves a lot of "boring" work. On the project that I'm currently shepherding, We're in the final stages. The release is probably still a couple of months away (at least), but we can see the exit sign, from here. It's been a couple of years.
The work, from here on out, is pretty bland. Lots of work, setting up glossaries, production servers, localizations, accessibility tests, color themes, brand consistency, etc.
And, of course, lots of testing; with the very real possibility of having to put the car up on blocks, and break out the monkey wrench.
It's been my experience that my younger self was less-than-enthused by this part of the project, but I was fortunate to have older peers and bosses, that forced me to walk through this stuff.
It feels great to ship. As I've gotten older, I've come to enjoy this, a lot more.
I wish you luck. I know that one thing that helped me, was to find nonprofits and volunteer Service orgs, and lend my skills to them.