While this discussion seems to lean heavily on the technical parts, there are many aspects of a business that can only be learned through experience. Project w

While this discussion seems to lean heavily on the technical parts, there are many aspects of a business that can only be learned through experience. Project work. Client relations. Lots of "general" business / work skills. If I meet some 50 year old dev, that's been at it professionally for 25-30 years, I will at least assume that he / she are somewhat knowledgeable in some of those areas. If you've worked on, from start to finish, on tens of projects - you've probably seen and experienced a wide variety of things. So, yeah, while younger and more inexperienced devs can be technically astute, it's always good to have experienced mentors that can guide you through the other stuff, not only the nitty-gritty technical details. After all, software development is much more than just punching out lines of code.