Part of it is: "What are you programming?" Phone development is a continuous slog through ever-changing APIs. An older programmer hardly helps here. In fact,

Part of it is: "What are you programming?" Phone development is a continuous slog through ever-changing APIs. An older programmer hardly helps here. In fact, this is probably one of the few places where I might agree that younger programmers are better--it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep up with phone programming changes and that's something that youngsters have aplenty. Web programming is a similar treadmill except for the fact that you can opt-out. If the client demands some fad technology, well, then experience doesn't matter. If the client simply wants a solution, then experience can be a godsend. I've watched a couple experienced programmers deliver amazing web solutions really fast--they used well-trod, boring technology that they knew very well. Embedded programming simply demands greybeards. I haven't seen an embedded project yet that succeeded if it didn't have a majority of people with 15+ years of experience and couple above 25+ years. So much will go wrong that it's more important to design around the failure modes up front--and you have to have been around the block a couple of time to understand what those are in order to avoid them.