Gen-Z are the digital natives (those born in 1997 onward), who were raised on social media, connected with their friends, family on Facebook, entertained on Tiktok, and are finding their opportunities on many social platforms.
Is YouTube king for this generation? how do you master your coding skill?
How about Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996)? How do they/we learn?
Top comments (23)
I was born in 1995 (millennial) and am now a senior engineer. I work with developers both younger and older than myself and age has never made a difference.
The younger generation might have a predisposiion to technology, but it's a game of experience and relevance, not age.
How can you be senior engineer at 26 ? 😅
I would say it is not about the age but the type of projects you work on, and that will allow you to master your skills 😉
Agreed but an engineer who quit school at 23 cannot get that much experience at 26. You can master few skills but you won't get the big pictures until several years imho.
Also being senior also should be measured by the number of problems/situations experienced. Even being talented, I really doubt anyone can get enough variety of experiences through a 3-year span.
Well, I started programming when I was 13 years old, and I can say I learned a lot over the past year.
Though, since I work for fun with no deadlines, teams, or clients, I don't have the soft skills yet to be a senior dev, but I think there are people like me that have those skills.
How did you start learning? google? youtube? trial & error?
I started around 13 too and thought I knew everything at 25. Now, at 35, I understand without knowing a bunch of stuff (DDD, object oriented programming, functional (& reactive) programming, more than one language for backend, front-end, desktop & system programming, different relational and nosql databases, message brokers, cryptography, networking skills, algorithms and complexity, ...), you miss the big picture (and I don't mention non-technical skills like leadership, communication, ...)
I mean if we're talking about technical skills, we will never run out of things to learn. OMG, the tech industry is soo humongous. Even if you're a fullstack master, there will be more things out of your knowledge like Kubernetes, ML stuff and so onn.
And it gets just as complex when you go to game development. There will be a lot of technical jargons and buzzwords like shaders, vertexs, faces, Vulkan, and stuff like that.
Indeed...
We were raised on early social media, connect with people online, and we're also on "the Tiktok" haha. We're not far removed from everything.
I personally learn best from following tutorials, but videos often drive me up the walls with people speaking too slowly or wasting time wiggling the cursor around during verbal filler (just stop freaking touching the mouse!). Give me a well-written set of documentation and a sandbox where I can go play with the new toys. I haven't noticed that being a generational thing though.
I feel you! I prefer learn by doing as well 😉 (but I am a Millennial, btw)
To be honest, for me it's more around doing and building more than anything.
If I want to build an app in a new tech stack, watch a youtube video on how they are used. Read the docs. Build an app and put it on my github and personal project.
If I want to learn how to reverse a linked list, there are tons of free videos. Watch one, do some leetcode / codewars.
If I want to learn how to code in solidity for smart contracts, watch a youtube video and write my own smart contracts.
The list goes on right....
I enjoy what I do as a developer so much that learning has become a skill that I have developed around my own intuition. Gen-Z devs that I surround myself with are just so motivated and full of ideas. Not afraid to fail and dont let perfectionism get in the way of building new things.
"Not afraid to fail and dont let perfectionism get in the way of building new things." 100% 🤩
Are you Gen-Z or Millennial?
I am Gen-Z 😃
Gen-Z here, can confirm a few Gen-Z people are technological enthusiast compared to some other Millenials, although some people are profoundly dumb(forgive my manners).But I believe in Millennials to be more knowledgable and experienced.
Now about myself, I did learn from following tutorials at first but later on other medias such as ebooks and mentors and OSS helped me learn.
I feel Gen-Z is more pragmatic than us Millennials. You can feel by they energy, that they really want to make a difference, and are less "emotional" about programming tools.
could you elaborate more about what that means to be less "emotional" about programming tools? I am genuinely curious lol
Gen-Z were raised on Tik Tok and are super screen and tech focused. Millennials are split between techies and non technical.
Gen-Z it is good
I was born in 2002 (I'm 19 now), I started doing Front-end & UI Design when I was 11, and now I have my own startup in web design (simmmple.com). I worked for 2.5 years at a web company in Bucharest (from when I was 15 to nearly 18), so after all of this, I think everything is possible. I don't think age makes a difference, we live in the era of information, and you can start anytime at every age. Information is everywhere, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, dev.to, etc. It depends just on you how you use it.
Also, I made a trendy free open-source admin template using Chakra UI and React! You can check it out, every feedback is helpful! github.com/horizon-ui/horizon-ui-c...
I was born in '76 and I can't say I've noticed any difference in the various generations of minions I've had under me, over the past 20 years.
They're either a good dev or a bad one, and that's wholly determined by their attitude to failure and their insistence on problem solving. Those aren't generational attributes, they're personal ones.
‘77 here, for what I’ve seen in my experience, I’ve noted that many millennials are much more afraid of risk or failure, but they’re also very open to adopt new things (often) for the sake of breaking with “the past”. I see Gen-Z somewhat specular: they like to experiment new risky things while taking inspiration from the old school.