One thing the article doesn't dwell on is the constant technical churn, where everyone wants the latest fad in programming or development process (e.g. agile). When you get to your sixties (like me) you are tired of seeing the same wheel being re-invented every year or having to dump all of your previous knowledge and expertise for a new language and framework. I used to be a Symbian developer but now I doubt if many people even remember this OS. I have changed direction and technology so many times that I have reached the point where most of my CV is now unusable. Remember Adobe Flash actionscript. Hah.

Sadly as you grow older it takes longer to learn new things and harder to find the enthusiasm to change. I can't summon up the evangelical zeal to support yet another programming development environment; especially when I know it will be old hat in two years time.

These days employers wants code written fast and projects completed in weeks not months. This is fine for energetic youngsters on their first or second project but when you have been on projects where every milestone is missed despite working all the hours to meet them, it gets harder to go full steam ahead writing code that may never be used.

Us old'uns are slowly being squeezed out of programming roles by a management that is only interested in speed and the latest tech. They are also not keen on paying for expensive engineers to re-train, when they can just hire cheap graduates to come in with new knowledge already in place. Experience in programming is no longer a valuable commodity.

It's a situation aggravated by the widespread adoption of Scrum and Agile, where the old heirarchy of software development has been discarded for a headlong hacking approach of constant refactoring. It's an approach I find goes against all of my experience in terms of creating good software. The new mantra is "as long as it works it's fine". But I guess in this age of constantly changing throw away production, that is all that is needed.