DEV-TALK SERIES/INTERVIEWS

What to do after retiring?

Is there any future for developers after 40?

Does the industry have a place for older developers?

These are the most common questions in every developer's mind. So, these questions often come up when I talk with/interview developers for my article. Different developers have different views and philosophies. You might find many insights and information in my articles.

But today’s interview is different. It’s because our today’s guest is a retired developer who has more than 20 years of experience in the software development industry. He is an Indian-born developer who worked in the USA, UK, and India for different companies in different roles.

The whole interview was held on Zoom. But he was such a gentleman that he gave me a tour of his beautiful home and introduced me to his two daughters( One of them is studying Computer Science! ).

I will skip most of our conversations in this article to keep it short and precise. Let’s dive into the interesting part of the interview…

Q: First, tell us what’s it like to be in the game for more than 20 years! And how was the scenario back then?

Honestly, It seems like a maximum of 2/3 years to me. I still remember my first day in Office.

But the scenario was a lot different. There were not a lot of frameworks or libraries two decades ago. We had to write a lot of code for a simple function. Because we had to build things from scratch. But somehow, I enjoyed that.

We used to distribute software on CDs and DVDs. Open-source software was not so popular back then. The community started to build up. Software security was a very luxurious idea. Cloud computing was not as mature as it is today.