The key for you will likely be getting in the door. The hurdle is not so much your age (especially for Assembly) as it is your lack of experience. I don't think

The key for you will likely be getting in the door. The hurdle is not so much your age (especially for Assembly) as it is your lack of experience. I don't think you'll find the same level of ageism for Assembly jobs as you might for other types of programming work. You won't get in the door just applying to jobs and saying you've got 30 years of being a hobbyist and love Assembly. You'll have to demonstrate something you can do, and ideally it will be something interesting to the person receiving your message/application. This becomes a marketing issue, and you can market yourself as a junior programmer and career transition candidate willing to take on junior work at junior prices for the chance to get in the door. You can usually disguise your age at least a bit by omission in resumes. A resume isn't a full biography, so we don't need to list every single thing (especially since you will likely have lots of irrelevant professional experience). We can also delete things like graduation dates (if you attended college) in order to avoid someone guessing your age. I'm the same age as you - if you're priced correctly for your skill level, your age might even be considered somewhat of an asset (maturity) in certain companies and jobs, but the key for you is marketing whatever skills you do have and leveraging those to get the skills you want (more programming).