[mcbrown]

"With age comes experience and also comes a strengthening of biases. Older people, so the stereotype goes, are inflexible and set in their ways, if very experienced in those ways."

Like most stereotypes, it might be true in some cases but far from universal. The literal two best developers I know, both over 50, are FAR from set in their ways. They are both constantly seeking new ways of doing things, exploring new languages and technologies, sometimes playing with low level projects (like making lights blink in interesting ways on breadboards), sometimes playing with high level projects (spawning hundreds or thousands of cloud instances to see how it works), but always looking for new things.

They might SEEM set in their ways when they shoot down bad ideas from expert beginners, but that's only because the expert beginner is confusing wisdom for lack of flexibility.