I’m not sure the ‘job’ as such of programming will exist for much longer – most of IT these days consists of assembling and debugging complex structures of third-party products, not actually writing code. Certainly code will still be written, but not for the most part by ‘programmers’ in paid employment for their coding skills. I don’t write code at all anymore in my working life, I miss it.

logicguru – “my mother told me that girls couldn’t be vets”. My wife is still bitter that her mother advised her not to go to med school.. one generation ago these shibboleths were still very real. How strange is that. I am in total agreement with you on the importance and peculiar neglect of career selection.

Didn’t work out.

abb1: Programming is pretty much like stenography these days.

Bollocks it is. The work that I do is closer to poetry than stenography. Sure, programming can be like that, if you work in the sort of intellectually and creatively bankrupt shop where they think software development is analagous to a manufacturing production line. However, at least in London, it is easy enough to find challenging, well-paid work that those sort of jobs can be avoided.

My uncle was silent, then said, “Good god, I worked for 50 years and not once—not one goddamned time did I ever have a job I liked!”

Times and expectations change.

(My brother is a tenured Sociology prof, and I’m not altogether certain he likes his job.)

I can remember wanting to be, alternatively, James Bond (ages about 8 through 12), Joe Strummer (12-15), Frank Lloyd Wright/Howard Roarke (15-19), Ludwig Wittgenstein (19-22), and Saul Bellow (22-28), before finally giving in and becoming, with much less celebration (and a fair amount of chagrin) myself. We’ll see how that goes… not bad so far, to be honest.

In the meantime, Patrick—your later-in-life—ascent to academe (if I’m reading you right) is inspiring. I had more than half given up on America’s providing second chances (especially in its universities), but I’m happy to see that I’m proven wrong. But then, logicguru’s post seems to reaffirm, in the face of your experience (and shouts out from a former Marine, long-haul truck driver, masonry laborer, etcetera), that the way through the gate to the path of higher (and fiercely competitive) social goods is a straight and narrow one, indeed.

BTW If I ever manage to return, does anyone have any advice on finishing a graduate degree and embarking on a career in academia as one approaches 40—or on the advisability of so doing?

A. ones I could actually get
B. ones I would be happy doing

and while both A and B were actually fairly large, they were unfortunately disjoint.

Funnily enough, though, this is the first time in my life I’ve had absolutely no idea what I want to be in 5-10 years.

10-16: Computer engineer

16-18: Sociologist or philosopher

18-21: Theoretical physicist

21-present: Quant on Wall Street with a theoretical physics PhD. I recognize that the job market for research physicists is dreadful, but I can’t imagine stopping short of learning quantum field theory and I’ve already dug a rather deep hole for myself. I think it’s too late to retool to become something respectable like a dermatologist.

Lord knows we need more economists interested in economics, and not theory as such, or for its own sake (leave that to the mathematicians), otherwise it’s so much talent and intelligence wasted (thinking here of the common or public good). We need economists like Tibor de Scitovsky, John Kenneth Galbraith, E.F. Schumacher, Juliet Schor, Richard Freeman, David Schweickart, Amartya Sen, Serge Kolm, Jean Dreze, John Roemer, Richard Thaler, Partha Dasgupta, Deirdre McCloskey, Michael McPherson, Philip Mirowski, Kaushik Basu, etc., etc. To be sure, philosophy of economics and economic theory is important, but it sure helps to have it make some connection with economics on the ground, or it’s so much intellectual masturbation (yes, it brings pleasure, but of a selfish sort). Neo-classical economists are often quite adept with the rhetoric of mathematical formalism, so much so they sever all ties with economic history and ‘real world’ economies (McCloskey’s complaint; by comparison, Platonic Forms are rather practical). Those of us in the proverbial Platonic cave need economists to return now and then from the Agathon, after all, the dialectic is ascending AND descending, as Iris Murdoch, among others, reminds us.