It's doable, your move to launch might be slow, but as long as you put in some time when your kids have been put to bed and they are asleep, you are moving forward with whatever project your working on, just make sure the little time you have besides netflix and chill with the wife is put to good use.
No interference from the social media or news site, use the time you have only working on the project with a iron focus, make a working plan etc and you will notice you'll get shit done pretty fast even though you have a limited time each day.
You're main goal should be to add something each day to the project, and try avoiding not adding anything at all, it could me something small on the days your stuck, but as long as you keep moving forward it is possible.
I've managed to build a small business im running on the side next to having a full time job, i managed by adding bricks to it everyday till it was ready, then i initiated the project and its so well planned it only puts me to work one or two days a week and i can include my wife, there are eventually tasks she can handle and help out with.
I got a late start in the field (studied physics in college and graduated in to the 2008 recession) and suspect if I'd been just a year or two later I'd have never made it happen.
My view (as a still quite young engineer around 30) is that good engineers don't become worse with age, quite the opposite. If you as a young programmer think you're better/faster than those old farts, check back in 10 years or so and you'll probably realize how naive you were. Now, bad engineers might stagnate completely, and those people are probably what makes up the bulk of the "old people stuck in old technologies; can't code" meme. Along with the people who end up doing less technical stuff and then forced to interview for other/technical positions after a layoff.
I think if you try to be excellent at what you do and improve over time, there is no reason you should have to worry about this until your brain is actually withering away.
> Now, bad engineers might stagnate completely, and those people are probably what makes up the bulk of the "old people stuck in old technologies; can't code" meme.
> I think if you try to be excellent at what you do and improve over time, there is no reason you should have to worry about this until your brain is actually withering away.
It sounds like a pretty serious problem to me. Everybody knows the meme, so when they're hiring older people they're really going to try to rake them over the coals in the interview to make sure they don't hire one of those 'old people stuck in old technologies; can't code' devs. This makes it much harder for those who can still code to pass technical interviews.
The nice thing about programming is that it's not like Starcraft: your typing and mousing skills, which would be the first to degrade as you get older, matter the least. It's not like Doom, where your reaction times decide your success or failure.
It's more like Civilization, where you spend more time looking at the board and thinking of moves than you do actually entering moves. And the more times you play, the more problems you've encountered, and the more possible moves you see. The Huns are attempting to flank you? Been there, done that. Someone picked up a wonder? You can work around that. Playing against Ghandi? Look out for them nukes.
And if you decide to play co-op Civilization with a newbie, you have the opportunity to help them bypass some of that learning curve, by passing on the things you have learned over your years of play.
The advantage of having seen all of the problems, in business terms? You don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to solve them, and you won't make a lot of mistakes while solving them. You can get past these simple problems in no time flat, and move on to the problems you haven't seen before. This makes you fast at 90% of the tasks you face.
The downside of having seen all the problems? You have a solution that you know works for every problem, and might not see the benefit in trying other solutions. When the Huns flank you, you send 50 spearman units to break the flank. But what about 10 artillery units? Or 1 tank?
When you know a solution works, you have to consciously push yourself to try a new solution. For some people that's easy, for others, not so much. But if you really want to remain at the top of your game, you need to make that push.
Well, I'm 35 and my progression gained momentum after 30, before the 30s everything new took time to get into because i had this idea i had to know everything about everything to be good. But now its a lot easier as i've build up quite some experience on how to fail and succeed.
Programming wise and learning wise i've also grown wiser and know where to have my focus to be able to get better, faster and learn new technologies with my own mental algorithm. Though this most likely has nothing todo with being over 30, but maybe more with the time and experience gained over time. But as you get into the 30s, some people get kids and buy a house and what not. But that will also in time teach you how to manage the time you have available, and you will try to work more efficient and narrow your focus onto your goals and tasks in your everyday programming job or what you're doing, you learn to filter away all the noise and stay focused on the task at hand.
And i also think its cultural thing though, they most likely have a huge community with people who has a flare for designing things that goes into the Apple-ecosystem, OS X is pretty nice to look at, and therefor people need to up their design principles to make their applications fit the OS, but don't get me wrong, there are a lot of ugly apps fro OS X as well, they just don't get the same promotion as the good looking apps. :D
Apple is a lot about design, also when it comes to development.
Only my personal thoughts and what i believe might be the reason.
