[cik]

Wow, so I finally registered for HN, just to be able to comment on this one. And man, I'm feeling old at 33.

I've having been developing professionally since 18. I took a weird route, spending one year at uni (17), then working full time, and getting my degrees at night before it was fashionable to do so. In ~15 years, I've had the gamut - developer to multi-geo team manager, with ownership of 9 datacenters. I vastly prefer software.

I'll echo edw519 there - quality of life increases dramatically once you get out of your 20's. The longer you're in it and learning, the more value you have. You've seen more, been around, and pick up new things faster - because they look like combinations of things you've seen before. Curve balls no longer freak you out, they're exciting.

tl;dr Getting older is actually awesome.