[gohrt]

> It sucks that a conventional programming career generally ends at age 35-40,

That's an illusion, created by two factors:

* Many people choose to leave the "coder" job as they age, and mentally it's a difficult field to enter if you never coded befo reage 35.

* The explosion of the size industry means that the number of young novices dwarfs the number of older veterans. You can see this now, as the young novices of the 2000s bust are still in demand when they are now veterans.

[hga]

So you've not heard of, or do not believe, the claims of rampant age discrimination?

I have my own telling experience there, based on being able to hide my age in my resume and my looks, and doing the former in the middle of a job search as well as subsequent ones.

[cunac]

Not sure that age discrimination is rampant but I do believe (and witnessed in interviews) that lot of people don't keep up with technology and then later use age discrimination as excuse. Experience in relevant technologies trumps almost everything else. Disclaimer: I am in my late 40s

[hga]

Does "keep up" require experience that can be cited on a resume?

"Experience in relevant technologies trumps almost everything else."

Hmmm, in my experience, unless it involves a big paradigm shift, such as moving to OO or functional programming, new "relevant technologies" can be quickly learned on the job, unlike being able to design systems, write good code, debug quickly if that's possible, build and debug systems, etc. The sort of stuff that takes more than a few years to learn how to do well.