This whole topic is so interesting to me. Software programming is actually, in reality, a mind numbing process involving extremely repetitive actions. Thanks to

This whole topic is so interesting to me. Software programming is actually, in reality, a mind numbing process involving extremely repetitive actions. Thanks to Hollywood and the fact that technology is transforming our world (not programmers... technology) the myth of the programmer as an intellect has flourished. That is true for most programmers; there are brilliant programmer of all ages who make the tools the rest use, and that's another topic altogether. The reality is that young programmers are popular not because they're brilliant, but because they are more willing to engage in repetitive tasks for long hours. The idea that older people don't have the intellectual chops is total BS; it's rather that as people get older they lose interest in unrewarding endlessly repetitive tasks. That is to say, they become more intelligent about how they are going to spend their time and their life.