The Aging Programmer [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVWQQeSOD0M

by belter • 2 years ago

237 162 2 years ago

youtube.com

zug_zug• 2 years ago

Looks to be 100% about aging, but I don't see anything specific to programming

belter• 2 years ago

So you have nothing to worry about....

monsieurgaufre• 2 years ago

We're lucking that aging has not impact on programming, then.

paganel• 2 years ago

I'm not yet 50, I'm "only" in my mid-40s, but for sure advancing in age has had an effect on the way I program code. For sure I won't be able to spend long hours in the night trying to decipher/solve a specific programming problem, I used to do that when I was younger.

I also used to type a lot more code, as in, my fingers used to type a lot more, I can't physically afford to do that now because after a certain threshold I can feel it in my fingers, and that feeling is not good.

I'd say that even my capability to stay focused on a specific issue has kind of changed, but maybe that's just a me thing, related to my specific life choices/environment, I couldn't tell, maybe some other programmers who have the same age as I do are better at keeping focused, or at least as good as they were 15-20 years ago.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 2 years ago

I'm 61 and I'm definitely aware that by many metrics I am a worse programmer than I was 10 years ago.

By some other metrics, I'm better, and I could still run circles around most younger programmers in terms of architecture/system design.

But it absolutely has an impact.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

Lucky employer then.

emmanueloga_• 2 years ago

Slides:

https://github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_Slides/blob/main/2024/K...

Animats• 2 years ago

Oh, thanks. The video is an hour long. Slide deck is two minutes.

Standard advice on aging. Not programmer specific.

edgarischatting3• 2 years ago

I really enjoyed the extra 58 minutes from her talk though, she didnt just read from the slides the added a lot of extra context.

willm• 2 years ago

Very general advice, but as a 50 year old developer I needed to read this.

ddellacosta• 2 years ago

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.

kbbgl87• 2 years ago

Just got that book yesterday because I've been struggling with managing my back pain. Hopefully it'll help mitigate it.

cjbgkagh6• 2 years ago

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.

dtdynasty• 2 years ago

Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility.

This does not seem intuitive to me. Why would this be the case?

mikestew• 2 years ago

Programmers are much more likely than the general population to have hyper-mobility

Boy, that one comes with a whole lot of [citation needed].

OJFord• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_(joints)

I think everyone doubting, saying counter-intuitive etc. is making a spot interpretation of what the term means ('very active sporty person' or something).

PaulHoule4• 2 years ago

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.

bityard• 2 years ago

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.

y-c-o-m-b2• 2 years ago

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.

lurking_swe• 2 years ago

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettlebell

z0r2• 2 years ago

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.

deivid• 2 years ago

Have you compared it to sitting on a yoga ball?

oytis• 2 years ago

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)

carschno• 2 years ago

Indeed. That partly seems to be based on the advice to build (save/invest) money while you are younger, which seems a bit contradictory.

I suppose everything is easier when you are rich, including ageing.

psunavy03• 2 years ago

It's not contradictory at all. As Einstein said, "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe."

cjbgkagh6• 2 years ago

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.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 2 years ago

"Money doesn't buy happiness, but it sure does make the bad times easier" - some 40s/50s Hollywood starlet.

furyofantares• 2 years ago

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.

pc864• 2 years ago

I think expecting anyone's advice on anything to "be transferable to everyone in all geographies and generations" is pretty ridiculous on its face.

valbaca3• 2 years ago

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

keybored3• 2 years ago

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.

scotty792• 2 years ago

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.

keybored3• 2 years ago

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.

Thanks.

waffletower• 2 years ago

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.

twh270• 2 years ago

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.

0x5f3759df-i2• 2 years ago

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.

pc864• 2 years ago

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.

edgarischatting3• 2 years ago

Im 34. I've used a permanent standing desk for 5 years, along with monitors at a proper height, an ErgoDox EZ keyboard, and a standing pad.

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.

danbmil• 2 years ago

My peak programming skills are close to what they were 30 years ago, but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods as I once could.

I feel like a pinch hitter: I can do a couple innings at a high level of performance, but I can't keep that level up as long as I used to.

OTOH I think I have better judgement when it comes to deep, complex questions of long-term architecture choices. My "meta-programming" skills are sharper than ever.

Kokouane• 2 years ago

but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods as I once could.

This scares me. I'm younger and thus, I feel like social media and short form content has had so much impact on my ability to focus that it already feels bad where it is right now. Never thought this might be the peak of my concentration power though.

wonger_• 2 years ago

I've felt the same. I started reading books again though, and I felt a small improvement in my ability to concentrate. Digital detoxing helps too.

amatecha3• 2 years ago

I'm 40 and as far as I can tell, I can concentrate just as well now as I did when I was 20. I'm also pretty deliberate with what I do in life, I don't engage in "mass social media" like FB/Twitter/etc. , I don't use YouTube, Tiktok, etc.. .. I mean, I will view something if someone sends a link, but I don't "browse" stuff (partly because browsing literally anything feels like I'm being manipulated and I'm pretty sensitive to that). Sometimes I see someone using a modern social media app like FB, IG or whatever, and I cannot imagine that months and years of this kind of "scrolling endlessly, pausing on things that grab your attention, then resuming" is healthy for one's consciousness or focus. I think the summary is, I live my life the same way I did in 1999 or whatever, as I've found that works for me, and I have to basically actively reject what modern society tries to manipulate me into living like. (btw this is hard to do, EVERYONE and EVERYTHING wants me to be paying attention to millions of disparate trivial things, it's a literal nonstop battle...)

JeremyNT• 2 years ago

I'm also a middle aged programmer and I don't think parent's observation is really about age per se.

Rather: we of a certain age grew up in a world before the optimized dopamine reward cycle of social media, and when the news / politics / outrage loops were far less potent. We could focus more because... well... we weren't being distracted to death.

Maintaining deep focus in the face of this onslaught is a skill I feel like people of all ages need to curate.

cjohnson318• 2 years ago

I'm 40; you're fine. I put down Instagram last year, and I never even think of it anymore. Your mind evolved over millions of years, "short form content" is not going to rewrite that. Once you delete that stuff off of your phone, your brain will immediately free up that headspace, like Instagram never even existed.

I don't know about my concentration. I've got more non-negotiable responsibilities now, so I have less time to work on things, but I work on them harder, and I take advantage of the off time to let solutions bubble up.

flir• 2 years ago

Focus is a muscle. Gotta build it up. Block everything, read books. (And I really should practice what I preach, here).

tialaramex• 2 years ago

“A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.” Frank Borman

UncleOxidant• 2 years ago

I thought I knew how to program 30 years ago (in my early 30s), but now realize that I didn't have much of a clue. So I think I'm hopefully a much better programmer than I was back then - though more aware of my weak areas and the fact that there seem to be a lot of them (the older I get, the less I know). I'm not sure concentration is the issue for me (though it is an issue and I know that social media etc. has killed my attention span) as much as not being able to sit for hours at a time anymore. I've gotta get up and walk around, go outside and move my achy joints. So more of a combination of physical and mental.

daxfohl3• 2 years ago

The challenge here is a lot of managers don't know how to grade you based on things you successfully avoided.

j45• 2 years ago

Clever architecture always beats clever code.

Companies that don’t get it confuse furious activity for fixing more and more effective ways

Natural focus can change to learning new things.

Focusing on learning and implementing brain health above all is the key I’ve found.

Starting to introduce individual magnesium threonate and zinc made a surprising difference.

Normal things like understanding how sleep, hydration, exercise, diet. The science around gut health has also been interesting for its contribution to focus and energy.

Be happy to learn from you on anything you find works.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

"Clever architecture always beats clever code."

Since the difference between clever code and broken code is often obfuscated and ephemeral, it's difficult to argue with the assertion.

I've so rarely seen clever architecture that I find it difficult to agree with it, though.

I amused myself for a few minutes reflecting on your choice of the verb "beats". Quite clever, to introduce such rich ambiguity!

numba8883• 2 years ago

but I cannot sustain that level of concentration for long periods

You can fix this by paying attention to it. When your mind starts wondering acknowledge this, take 5 min 'break' lazily thinking about the task. Then get back to the task. This is sort of mind hack.

Another way to control your thoughts is through meditation. A lot can be done this way. To summarize it: you can consciously control what you are thinking about. It's non physically hard.

swah• 2 years ago

Can I read more about this? The "lazy break" in particular - is this something you personally came up with?

svilen_dobrev• 2 years ago

interesting. i am 55-ish.

"change is the only constant in universe" - whoever said that.

For a change, i went long-distance bikepacking 5y ago. 500-1000-1500kms.

Then, Learned to e-foil 2y ago.. took me weeks if not months to get the balance right. (While some kid i taught on the beach, needed 25 mins :/) 7000km so far. Traumas not counted - but hey i am (even more) alive. Today seawater was 8'C.. so what.

The other day decided to (finally) learn Go.. did the tour mostly, then, what, just read the spec top to bottom (it's short, has interesting recent changes in scope of for-vars). A nice little language as they frame it. (Maybe 25th or 35th programming language i learn. stopped counting long ago)

But.. Cannot be bothered to LLMize meself. And Maybe connected, it seems hard to find a (proper) job recently. esp. if excluding some things on ethical grounds.. Which brings cynicism - as described in the article.

But yeah. Better Live now. Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery..

have fun

fritzo• 2 years ago

I haven't tried e-foil, but did I thoroughly enjoy learning to balance on a racing stand up paddle board last summer (only 23" wide). It took me many hilariously humbling weeks of constantly falling off before I could stay up for any distance. I loved feeling inept and awkward but with only benign consequences: failure means a mere dunk in warm water.

tonymet5• 2 years ago

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.

troyvit4• 2 years ago

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.

tonymet5• 2 years ago

physical appearance is one of the most informative indicators of health.

Insanity• 2 years ago

100%. Not only does this help physically but mentally as well. My mental health improved by strides when I started exercising regularly.

ant_li0n• 2 years ago

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).

tonymet5• 2 years ago

yes i have friends and family in their 80s who look younger

cloverich2• 2 years ago

One thing I've struggled with, that is very personality dependent, is being assertive around younger, sharper programmers. It can be an odd dynamic, where I may work with people smarter and faster but less experienced than myself. It can become difficult depending on the dynamics to push for the best choices in architecture, libraries, etc, when it is something they don't want to do, if you are not explicitly their senior. More naturally confident and assertive programmers will not have this issue. This is particularly problematic when pushing for restraint.

For example, choosing a more well supported and stable UI library for an internal tool, vs using one with e.g. more components or more customization. Its hard to sell that there's no money in fancy internal tools, and a limited set of UI that works well and requires little or no support and even less cognitive load, and just working with those constraints, can result in a net benefit long term. Especially when someone that is sharp and fast can bang out working solutions very quickly. Then three years on the tool is only growing, and the complexity is high, re-usability is low, each page is its own snowflake, and someone has to maintain it. The cost suddenly becomes that of an FTE, for a tool that's only occasionally used, which is astronomically cost ineffective. I told you so is worse than worthless because it solves nothing and only burns bridges. You just deal with the outcome and know you should have pushed harder, perhaps even put your job on the line. Tough to do for trivial matters. I think people that excel as aging programmers figure out how to deal with this well, whether through being more assertive, more convincing, more officially senior, or perhaps even more selective about the situations they get themselves into.

I guess what's not surprising is that you can work in this career so long, continually on "the same stuff", and yet the patterns and opportunities can provide interesting new problems to solve, not always the ones you thought needed solving.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 2 years ago

know you should have pushed harder, perhaps even put your job on the line

If you are not the ultimate decision-maker, it is not your fault what decision was made. If you are going out of your way to point out the flaws and issues you anticipate, you are doing everything you need and, indeed, everything you reasonably can.

basfo• 2 years ago

I don't see a problem with my programming skills, but with my ability to play the corporate game.

Probably because i have a lot of experience, i kind of know when a manager wants to push a team too much because he wants to play some game of thrones with another manager. I know when they decide to ignore all warnings to get to a deadline, and then when everything explodes they blame someone else. I know when someone has no idea on what he is doing but has too much power. I know when they are demanding world class results on half the time and a tenth of the resources any serious company would dedicate to the effort.

Today you have this "go fast, break things" mentality, which sounds cool and "based", but justifies breaking any rule of software engineering (who has time to write test, amirite?).

And now with IA, is even worse, any manager thinks they can rewrite their stack because they got "hello world" running on localhost.

Maybe i'm getting old...

hintymad2• 2 years ago

Today you have this "go fast, break things" mentality

Not in most of the big tech companies, even in the bay area. It's amazing that the bay area companies have managed to grow themselves into giant bureaucratic organizations and they console themselves with bullshit like slow is fast.

CobrastanJorji• 2 years ago

That's because "go fast and break things" was a stupid plan for children and criminals. It worked sometimes in the same way that some people who move to LA to become A-list actors succeed, but that doesn't make it a good plan. Slow IS faster. But slow can also be slow; you can go slow because you're doing it right, or you can go slow because you're dragging cinderblocks behind you for no reason. The trick is telling those two things apart.

dkarl• 2 years ago

If you want to be a programmer past the age of forty, you have to accept watching your manager learn things about software development (and management) that you learned years ago.

And that's okay. If it drives you crazy, either let it go, or bite the bullet and apply for the job yourself.

lapcat• 2 years ago

Or become an entrepreneur.

Joel_Mckay• 2 years ago

In general, in such situations the senior devs pull the ejection cable, and form a new company without the managerial labor cost overhead.

If they still want product support, than get a quote from SAP first. Ghost ships don't need managers by the way...

Almost every sick division I saw had a 15% budget kickback clause in their contract for unspent resources. =3

jxramos• 2 years ago

IA or AI?

pc864• 2 years ago

Just think about it for a second.

daxfohl3• 2 years ago

Yup, or EM pitches the big five year vision rearchitecture because that's what builds their empire, even though a cron job that takes a couple days to write would solve the business need.

daxfohl3• 2 years ago

And you know that you'll come back in five years and nothing will have changed, except five new services that do half of what the vision required, most systems still depend on what was originally there, the team has tripled in size and most of them are just there to maintain the workarounds of the half-implemented systems, latency, cost, storage, and bug count are all way up, and no new functionality has been built that the original cron job couldn't have handled.

ok123456• 2 years ago

How is BMI racist?

philk103• 2 years ago

One example of many - https://www.henryford.com/blog/2023/11/how-bmi-is-flawed-and...

theultdev5• 2 years ago

It's in the title, but that article lists no reasons why it's racist.

They try to relate it to socioeconomic status, but BMI is applied to poor white people as well.

I don't buy that reasoning on face value though, it's perfectly affordable to eat healthy. These days fast food and processed foods are much more expensive than buying fresh groceries.

Just a trash article trying to normalize obesity and race-bait.

liveoneggs2• 2 years ago

Reading the articles below it appears that BMI should be sub-categorized by race and gender categories - healthy weights for [X-race + Y-gender] person to increase its efficacy as a health tool.

theultdev5• 2 years ago

And what about mixed races?

Most reasons denote it's racist because of socioeconomic status.

Should we account for income in BMI as well?

numba8883• 2 years ago

There is correlation with race and groups within the same race. Which makes it more complicated than just one number fit all.

I personally use my own self 10 years back as a 'normal' state. No I'm about 10% heavier then I should be. Working on it ;)

mythrwy• 2 years ago

Is being overweight healthy for any race? If not, it's probably not a great idea to suggest that it is for the members of the protected race. In fact that seems a bit racist itself.

froh• 2 years ago

slightly more recent, slightly expanded version of the same talk, with link to slides:

https://youtu.be/LArOT95LTJU?si=o100t7URZKOLfoFR

hintymad2• 2 years ago

Lots of interesting personal stories and anecdotes in the comments. I was wondering what the average case would be, though, as I don't think many people, myself included, will be far from the average. Indeed, the video cautioned us in the Disclaimer section at the minute 1:24 and quoted the famous WWII story on survival bias.

amatecha3• 2 years ago

Additional instance of this presentation put on by the same speaker at another conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArOT95LTJU

pxc• 2 years ago

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. :)

PunchTornado• 2 years ago

Good luck. Hope your sight will hold until they discover a cure.

aaroninsf• 2 years ago

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.

gosub100• 2 years ago

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.

kmoser• 2 years ago

Lots of good advice, especially for younger people for whom it can pay increasing dividends because they're starting earlier.

I have a small quibble about the idea of knowing when you're thirsty. Many people either don't realize when they need to drink more, or actively avoid drinking because they don't want to have to go to the bathroom more frequently. As a result, they are underhydrated and their overall health suffers. (This is largely based on my observations, not any studies, but it was confirmed to me by a PT who encourages people to hydrate more.) So while it may not be necessary to set a timer and drink a liter of water every couple of hours, simply thinking "I'm in touch with my body and I don't feel thirsty" may be a product of deluded wishful thinking.

Also she mentioned around the 50 minute mark that "brain games" don't actually help you get better at anything except those brain games, but doing activities you like such as reading are helpful overall. What makes one mental activity more helpful than another? Most programmers tend to like brain games, so you'd figure any mental exercises are better than none, especially if you do different ones.

paulryanrogers• 2 years ago

I think the point is that (over?) paying for 'brain' games is a waste unless you're doing it solely for leisure.

HL33tibCe7• 2 years ago

I was enjoying this, but then reached a point where the speaker said

BMI is just nonsense, and not only that, it’s almost certainly racist nonsense […] it has been shown to be healthier in the group they call overweight than the group they call normal

Which makes me doubt the veracity of other claims made, to say the least

rexpop• 2 years ago

Under the newly adopted policy, the AMA recognizes issues with using BMI as a measurement due to its historical harm, its use for racist exclusion, and because BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations. Due to significant limitations associated with the widespread use of BMI in clinical settings, the AMA suggests that it be used in conjunction with other valid measures of risk such as, but not limited to, measurements of visceral fat, body adiposity index, body composition, relative fat mass, waist circumference and genetic/metabolic factors.

https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-ado...

wakawaka286• 2 years ago

Yes, it is not necessarily a racist view to assume that people who look different have more in common than not. If American doctors conduct research on a group of people within their own demographics, and that does not apply to all of humanity for some unknown reason, that doesn't mean they are racists. It's a vague guideline anyway with many exceptions such as bodybuilders and people with unusual proportions.

valbaca3• 2 years ago

You're equating white with American.

BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations.

valbaca3• 2 years ago

Take a cursory look into BMI. It's completely BS. Goes right into the same bin as the food pyramid and the taste-zones of the tongue.

skirmish• 2 years ago

Meanwhile The Economist says [1]:

"In a way, those over the age of 55 but under the age of 75—roughly speaking, the baby-boomers and some of what is referred to as “Generation X”—are the new problem generation. <...> Whereas young people in rich countries these days are addicted to their phones, more anxious than previous generations and far less likely than them to use mind-altering substances or to party recklessly, their grandparents belong to a generation that experimented with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. As they reach older age, they are not giving up their old habits."

[1] https://www.economist.com/international/2025/01/02/why-peopl... , https://archive.is/dkxot

The Aging Programmer [video]

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