45 years old, been a professional developer since I was 13 (sold my first code in '83), been through all the ropes in 3 decades .. and am now facing the agism o

45 years old, been a professional developer since I was 13 (sold my first code in '83), been through all the ropes in 3 decades .. and am now facing the agism of this industry with a fury. My advice to all of you - young or old - is never forget to learn new things. Always have at least 5% of your stack of things, to do with learning something new. Software development is not a 'career': its an art form. There will always be new states of the art, and as an evolving process, will necessarily involve abandoning the old and continuing with the new. Nobody cares if you're old. Everybody cares if you've been doing it for 30 years and still can't write a parser, or compile a new library, or spend 8 hours to hack up some code in a new language that nobody knows about yet. Keep that stuff up, newbies and old-folks alike .. its the only way forward.