[mkn]

The rest probably are so out of touch they do not participate in developer communities such as Stack Overflow.

If you're curious about the down-votes, it may be because the above quote is an example of the particular kind of bigotry commonly referred to as "ageism". For future reference, if you are ever in a management position, that kind of thing is actionable in a work environment. You could get your backside sued off, is what I mean, if you are found to have used that in a hiring decision, for example.

[marshray]

I'm old enough to feel like employers may sometimes find younger and cheaper people to do dumb stuff faster.

What you say about the HR liability potential agrees with what I've heard from HR people, but never seen it be a factor in reality. In practice I can't imagine suing over a development gig. I can think of a million bad reasons people might not hire/let go a good developer (e.g. questions about manhole covers) but the "he's a curmudgeon who's reluctant to slap stuff together quickly" argument seems halfway legitimate.

So I say, bring it on, let's have an open discussion about who's smart, who's fast, who's wise, and when it even matters.

[KeyBoardG]

I agree with you. Experienced developers with skills are key for higher level functions such as architecture and system planning due simply to the "been-there" factor. My statement above was geared toward the "curmudgen".