[tednaleid]

I think that this is showing a correlation between those programmers that enjoy programming and want to share their knowledge with others, and those programmers that stick with it for more than a decade.

I bet that if you could separate out the younger developers who will still be developing in 10-20 years, that their rep on SO is similar to that of older developers. Those developers that'll wash out in the next 5 years are dragging down the participation numbers of their peers.

So it isn't the age that's important, it's the personality type which is correlated to those people that'll stick with development.