Honestly, most (decent) older programmers I've worked with are dramatically more productive than most (decent) younger programmers I've worked with. Both in te

Honestly, most (decent) older programmers I've worked with are dramatically more productive than most (decent) younger programmers I've worked with. Both in terms of functioning systems and in terms of lines of code. They waste less time writing unnecessary duplicates. They waste less time writing, fixing, and troubleshooting bugs. Their code tends to work when it goes out the door, rather than requiring multiple round trips. And when they want to brute force something, they break out a small code generator / write a small tool and blow past multiple younger eng-years worth in terms of LoC... and that's before accounting for them having written the tens of thousands of lines of foundational code that the others are working within. --- edit: since the parent is more focused on pace than productivity... it applies to pace too. they're often spending far more (too much) time in meetings and mentorship and whatnot comparatively, so day-to-day pace can seem slower, but if they get a chance to focus they tend to be miles faster in every single way. Hundreds+ of working lines of code in a day is totally reasonable if that's what the problem calls for. It's why you see older engs disappearing for a week and building git. Or unix. Far from small projects by literally any measure.