I'm "only" 61, so I've got a bit of the hill to descend yet. I can assure you my desire to learn hasn't changed a lot. The ability ability absorb new stuff has diminished, but it's made up for by the shear number of patterns I've learnt over the years allowing me to discover the mechanism they are trying to explain far faster than I was able to do it when young.
The end result is now I happily sit down with my son and enthusiastically try to get through machine learning papers (something he needs to keep up with). I still pick it up, well pick up at least the bits either of us understand, faster than him.
I agree with another poster here though. My tolerance for the learning fluff that may not be useful in 5 years time has all but vanished, and yes the prime example of that is JavaScript frameworks. Nothing wrong with a good JavaScript framework of course but as I heard a speaker introducing his framework say, they have the lifetime of split milk.
Thanks for sharing this -- I'm 32 and only just finishing my undergrad in mathematics (I say finishing but I'm between 1 and 2 years away depending on how many courses I can juggle in addition to my day job and grown up responsibilities :)). And your post made me feel silly for feeling too old and silly to even bother to finish at this point in my life
The end result is now I happily sit down with my son and enthusiastically try to get through machine learning papers (something he needs to keep up with). I still pick it up, well pick up at least the bits either of us understand, faster than him.
I agree with another poster here though. My tolerance for the learning fluff that may not be useful in 5 years time has all but vanished, and yes the prime example of that is JavaScript frameworks. Nothing wrong with a good JavaScript framework of course but as I heard a speaker introducing his framework say, they have the lifetime of split milk.