In general I, at age 26, agree that experience gained with age can provide a strong benefit in terms of code organization, management, interpersonal relations,

In general I, at age 26, agree that experience gained with age can provide a strong benefit in terms of code organization, management, interpersonal relations, and many other factors. I think it's a gross misrepresentation, however, to say: ... Suzanne Dodd, had to coax another 77-year-old engineer, Lawrence Zottarelli, out of retirement to modify the old technology so it could store more data. It seems the young engineers, growing up in an era of unlimited storage, didn’t know how to tackle the problem. Last time I checked we still don't have unlimited storage... and Is this really because the young engineers didn't know how to tackle the problem, or because the code was poorly documented and written in a way that would be confusing to anyone who was not the original engineer? Programming styles have changed; people used to have to use their memory very efficiently and therefore had tricks to use it more efficiently that aren't as popular now (sacrificed for readability/maintainability), that doesn't mean that young people can't learn those tricks, just that they haven't had to.