42 here, started just before the Internet took off, when it hit, I jumped on full bore. Most of my peers that where a little older stuck with desktop and mainfr

42 here, started just before the Internet took off, when it hit, I jumped on full bore. Most of my peers that where a little older stuck with desktop and mainframe development. Most people don't realize how few of us where in the trade back then and even less made the jump to developing Internet technologies. So there is also a dividing like or epoch in programming where the entire discipline of development changed. In many ways the early days of Internet development was archaic if you where used to desktop development. It felt like a step backwards and development in handcuffs, so a lot of developers that had time in the industry just ignored it as there was still money to be made on the other side. So if we look at 40 it really is a dividing line where of the few people that where doing development a small fragment of that group actually started developing in what would be somewhat relevant technologies today. Of that group, possibly only in the thousands, attrition has taken it's toll (the .com bust took a lot of them, which gets missed a lot in these discussions). Now we have all had that bad interview, with a bad company that puts some kid fresh out of school in a lead role and he grills all new applicants on theory that is in no way relevant to what we actually do and anyone in the industry for a meaningful amount of time, has long purged that info from immediate recollection. But I don't see that as an age discrimination problem, I see it as a bad management problem, and a willful lack of understanding about technology and technologist on the part of business people (for those reading, first technical hire can make or break your company). Fortunately it has been my experience that most of those companies don't stick around for too long.