I'm also 38, and probably at the high end of the majority of the programmers at my workplace, but we have a handful of much older programmers who will probably

I'm also 38, and probably at the high end of the majority of the programmers at my workplace, but we have a handful of much older programmers who will probably be retiring over the next 5-10 years, and not many in between (ages in the mid 40s to early 50s seem pretty rare among the coders here). In our case, a large percentage of the coders in the 50+ ages are very much specialists supporting software and systems that are being phased out in part because it is becoming more difficult to support those environments every year. It is difficult to find career paths which continue to make it worthwhile and still continue coding, but it's also difficult to find people who want to continue coding and can keep up with the progress of technology. Further, it's difficult to evaluate whether someone has the right combination of skills, desire, and adaptability in the hiring process. Unfortunately, most people seem more likely to associate 2 out of 3 of those traits with youth, and those also happen to be the hardest traits to see on a resume. For example, if someone has worked on a lot of projects in a lot of different software environments with different programming languages, it can be difficult to determine whether this means they can adapt well to change, or they can't work well with a team or grasp the necessary concepts for a given platform or language.