| You're getting down votes because it's simply not true. It's not about age it's about the person. And it couldn't be more wrong to say that there's nothing to learn after 8-10 years, even in web. But let's talk about the competitive advantage part of your argument. Personally, I have spent 20 years collapsing and simplifying "everything" in my work product. IE ui design, coding patterns, and all other aspects of my tech related work product. Whenever I show my code to new devs they usually say "yup I get it, it's easy". But it's not easy, I just spent a crap load of time thinking about those patterns over the years making them easier and easier over every iteration. So, that's one competitive advantage right there. But another competitive advantage polyglot old guys have. They can truly be a full stack developers taking an idea from mockup to web and mobile and completely scaled distributed systems. It's VERY hard for anyone to do that without putting in 10-15 years because each discipline (design, mockup, mobile, architecture, scaling, etc.) takes a lot of time and effort to master. That said I have met 30 year olds who started at 15 who could do that too. I think of it like the CEO who worked his way up from the mail room, he's seen every part of the company inside and out and that's why he's so good at building companies now. |
There are also things you cannot control - changes to your brain as you get older, the kinds of jobs that are available, what other computer programmers specialize in. These are your odds.
Your success is a function of your efforts and your odds. Success = f(try harder, your odds). Since you are human, you can choose your path, and it doesn't make sense to choose a path where the odds decline so dramatically as you get to 46 ... 58 ... 63 ...