[zeraholladay]

I've been wondering if the perspective won't shift as the current generation of developers ages. When will HN be the old farts site; will perspective's shift then? More of a hypothetical question.

Second, and this is a broad statement, society is currently in a phase of devaluing the older mind. We're too quick to assume older minds cannot learn as easily, and older minds accept this as fact in a self-fulfilling way. The reality of the situation is that we're living longer, so we'll need to make valuable contributions later in our lives. Tech definitely isn't a mistress for 50+ year-olds, but that's a problem with our culture and not technology.

[draggnar]

this is interesting. my father was a tech guy that found himself laid-off a few years back when he hit 50. He hung up the tech boots, started importing foods from his home country to sell to local gourmet shops. Not a huge business but it is the thing he is doing since he was too young to retire. He genuinely enjoys doing it, meeting people and delivering products. It was a complete 180 from what he was doing before. Maybe tech is something inherently for younger people/minds? Maybe techies need to become more open minded with career options as time goes on?

[zeraholladay]

I've worked in a "tech" department with mostly older folks as the youngest person. It was frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I heard "nobody knows how to do that." There were plenty of older COBOL programs, in 10 years they'll be called Java programmers. The COBOL programmers maintained a legacy business application, which was a mammoth beast of obscure rules and uncharted/unknown results. But the system worked and made the company money. Point is, there are still opportunities for older developers although they might not be ideal. Frankly, it was a soul crushing job and I can't believe I'm defending it even in this context.

That's good about your dad tho. I don't know if I'd be able to make that kind of change if I'm ever in his position.

[beachgeek]

Good for your father! It isn't just tech, everyone in every industry needs to be nimble.

Even if you are a farmer, you might find you need to switch from growing say wheat to corn because market conditions changed.

[ilaksh]

When you put it that way, as the current generation ages, sounds like you are talking about one or two decades down the line.

Call me crazy, but I think that within two or three decades, its not just going to be "old" programmers who are worried about their jobs. I think that actually sooner than we realize, artificial general super-intelligence will arrive, and make ALL of the humans (at least version 1.0s) obsolete.