As an older programmer I'd recommend getting into a more specialized area that isn't so faddish: systems programming, machine learning, high performance compute

As an older programmer I'd recommend getting into a more specialized area that isn't so faddish: systems programming, machine learning, high performance compute, networking, crypto, really advanced devops, computer vision, etc. Take the time to massively level up in some high end niche and you can do really well. It's also a better place to leverage the experience that comes with age. Some 20 year old out of college might not have the experience to code extremely high performance bare metal algorithms that work across architectures. Those areas take skill and a deep understanding of how computers work throughout the entire stack from hardware up to UI/UX.