[giovannibonetti]

Because most of those skills are relatively easy to be picked up at any stage in life, whereas computer literacy - or even a new programming language - is quite hard to introduce into people after they are 30 or so.

Take this with a grain of salt, as it is based mostly on my own experiences, although I remember at least an essay from Paul Graham talking about how rare it is to have a programmer switch languages after some age.

[emodendroket]

I have changed languages every time I started a new job and sometimes just switching projects on the same job. I don’t think learning a language is really that big a deal for a programmer.

I’m sure it’s hard to learn to be a serious programmer past a certain age. But it’s not easy to learn a new (human) language or get really good at many of the other skills I mentioned that quickly either.