[rlonn]

Funny, I'm also relatively old - 50 - and have been programming almost 40 years (if you count typing in zx80-Basic code from magazines...) and I am exactly the same. I love to make things, and programming is often a creative activity where you can quickly build something that is entirely new to the world. I think that's why I like it so much, but I'm pretty uninterested in learning new tech/languages/frameworks just for the sake of knowing them. The only motivation for me is building new things (and getting people to use them). I pick up new tech quickly once I'm forced to, but usually not before then. It usually happens through collaboration with others - they use some tech, which forces me to pick it up in order to work with them, but my only real interest is to build a product and release it onto an unsuspecting world.