This got me thinking, I'm wondering how this will interact with the fact that technologically, we're getting increasingly better abstractions. So there's less pressure to learn what happens physically, the way that folks like Wozniak had to.

Is low-level expertise going to continue to skew older? Or are things like Rust and embedded AI going to bring in a bunch of new blood?

Unlikely. Some people really just are better at low level than high level (and vice versa.) Further, I would say anyone who started after say... '97 never needed to have that layer, and '87 may be true too. The true pressure hasn't existed in over 25 years and yet we still have low level expertise because embedded will continue to be a use case.

The most powerful abstractions are typically not free. The rate of performance improvement from improvements in hardware has slowed down and might continue slowing down. Thus, the pressure to learn what happens behind various abstractions might actually increase, if advantageous performance improvements can primarily be obtained by peeling back the layers of abstraction at the cost of some development efficiency, since you can't just wait a couple of years for hardware to develop to a point where it can handle your inefficient abstraction anymore.

> Or are things like Rust and embedded AI going to bring in a bunch of new blood?

AI product dev hat on for this comment. My take is AI will continue to give solid first drafts, and expertise, creativity, and curiosity are required to take it the rest of the way. Maybe, just maybe, we get beyond the GPT architecture and embed a reasonable state of the world for wider use cases similar to a CoPilot.

We are getting more abstractions, not necessarily better ones. I much prefer working with people who figure out how things work under abstractions rather than relying on them blindly.

How about the general decline of cognitive ability with age? I'm in my late 30s, starting to feel fatigue in dealing with nasty little problems on a daily basis. I can say whether an approach is good or bad, but actually coding the stuff with all the modern ephemeral frameworks and libraries is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. I would want to afford to do "recreational programming" on greenfield projects, unbound by time and business requirements, but it is a luxury.

50 year old here. You replace reflex intelligence with applying wisdom.

I'm a very senior IC in a FAANG and almost my whole job is going around and sharing 30+ years of wisdom with people on everything from "dealing with people" to architecture to pull request reviews.

FAANG jobs and organisational structures are not the norm across the world. The ratio between "people fixing stuff" and "old wisemen" is heavily skewed towards the former.

No doubt on the latter. I write a lot of "wisdom based code" to "fix stuff." Ideally before it needs fixing. :)

Also, while I'm at FAANG now, I'm there because I was previously at a startup that was acquired by said FAANG, and if anything, there is even MORE of a need for this sort of wisdom intelligence in a startup. :)

Good for you, but you are in a privileged position. Over here in grim Eastern Europe and outside a capital, your best chance is to find a remote job that doesn't actually suck and has longer-term prospects. Climbing to a managerial position means controlling people and being in touch with other managers posting bullshit on LinkedIn. Nobody will hire you to just write "wisdom-based" proof of concepts or whatever.

Sounds like you could be having health problems or just depression. You might mention this to your doctor at your next check up. What you describing doesn’t sound like normal aging for someone in their 30s.

> How about the general decline of cognitive ability with age?

I don't think there is an inevitable general decline of cognitive abilities with age, or the effect isn't strong enough to matter. At least, I haven't really seen them.

What I have seen is older people who are just tired of the constant personal improvement that any career needs to continue to flourish. People often find their niche and just want to stay there. That's a different thing entirely, though.

> How about the general decline of cognitive ability with age?

This is a real issue at say 85, not at 45. You almost certainly aren't quite as quick as you were when you were 25, but on the other hand you typically know a lot more and the experience probably means you actually make far fewer errors overall...