[shin_lao]

because they spend more time looking out for new, good things that the average person

Yet I think the best programmers I know use languages that are 20 to 30 years old as their main weapon of choice (C/C++ for example).

I'd also care to say that once you reach a certain skill level, you see beyond the language and don't find yourself looking for the latest shining new stuff.

[WildUtah]

>>the best programmers I know use languages that are 20 to 30 years old as their main weapon of choice (C/C++ for example).

C is 40 years old and C++ is 32 years old. (Visual Basic is 20-30 years old, though.)

[shin_lao]

Well if you want to be pedantic, C++ is actually twenty eight years old (1983), but as the language evolved a lot, modern C++ is probably less than ten years old. It depends on what you can a language and what you call a dialect.

C is indeed almost forty years old.

[swah]

I've only recently found out that by "Modern C++" most people mean the way to write C++ as exposed by Alexandrescu's book on Generic Programming - is that what you mean too?

[nightski]

There is a huge difference between being pragmatic and beaten into submission by industry, and seeing no value in language innovation. I highly doubt the latter is the case for most of these veterans you speak of.

[danssig]

It could be that, or it could be that the very best stuff was discovered years ago.

[dextorious]

The best programmers maybe. But not "elite programmers".

Where by "elite programmers" we mean the average startup kid that thinks he is teh awesome because he has written yet another framework/library no one needs in the functional and/or scripting language in vogue at the moment.