I am 56 and still love programming. I had a wake-up call recently about whether the programming world still loves me however. I am looking for a new challenge a

I am 56 and still love programming. I had a wake-up call recently about whether the programming world still loves me however. I am looking for a new challenge and saw an opening for a "C++ cross platform dev" at an interesting (sports stats and league management) startup just down the road from my house. I love sport, love stats and I've been hobby coding a successful C++ chess GUI for years (plus tons of professional C++ experience). Submitted an application through an annoying SaaS job application site. When the submission completed the automated message from the CTO was "thanks we'll get in touch if your experience matches our needs". I had a strange premonition. "I am never going to hear from these guys". Two weeks later, after hearing nothing I thought I'd try something else. After spending an hour to eventually successfully find out the CTO's email (it's one of these cool new companies that makes direct contact more or less impossible) I sent the following email; Subject: Can I Buy you a Coffee? To: $Name, CTO $Company Hi $Name, I am an experienced programmer looking for interesting challenges. $Company is exactly the kind of company I'd like to help out next. I love the idea of taking on the world from $NiceSuburbWhereBothMeAndCompanyLive. I could send you a CV but I don't think that's the best way of us finding out if there is a real opportunity for me to help you. Basically I have heaps of experience in a bunch of important technologies, but much more importantly I am capable of learning new languages and technologies quickly. For example, at the moment I am teaching myself Rust, just for the hell of it, and because I think it is cool and exciting and has a future. I am not a paint by numbers developer. Copying and pasting snippets from Stackoverflow without understanding is not my thing. Deep level understanding and sound software engineering is my thing. I'd love a chance to show you what I can do, and I would definitely consider doing so on an unpaid basis, at least initially. I've had some significant success in my career and these days I don't have to work to make a living. For this reason I could be the ultimately flexible "resource" - for example it's possible I could help out on an occasional basis, without requiring inflated contractors' rates. Basically I am offering something a little bit "out of the box". I don't think either of us has much to lose by having that coffee and opening our minds to the possibilities. Cheers, Bill. I must admit this time I did expect a reply, but no luck this time either. What kind of person would just ignore something like that? I think it might be a generational thing - just ignore emails if you don't want to answer them. They're still advertising that C++ job too. It took me a while to realise that these days cross platform C++ probably means iOS and Android - not Windows, Mac and Linux any more. Still you get a certain amount of experience and you realise there's very little really new under the sun and you can adapt your experience and understanding and learn anything "new" quickly if you need to. End of my bitter rant.