I'm not sure it's age related, sure, we might slow down slightly over time, but what we lose in speed... we gain in wisdom, soft-skills, experience in general. Which I suspect more than makes up for a slightly decline in sheer speed cognition wise.
I can't help but think of Donald Knuth, aged 85, sat in his home office somewhere, still chipping away at some of the hardest problems in computer science.
It sounds like your problem is something more temporal. For instance, someone else here mentioned about other stresses and responsibilities in your life for example. It might be that it's just a boring and arduous task, not everyone excels at tasks that are just not that interesting. Besides, I don't think the vast majority of us are good at remembering layers and layers of calls and abstractions.
My advice is, there's probably nothing wrong with your abilities or your brain, just try to work on small sections at a time and don't be hard on yourself. We're not 100% all of the time, there are so many factors that play a part in how we perform on each task.
I'd also say that, 40 isn't particularly old, it's easy to think that when so many engineers are in their mid-20's, but in the grand scheme of things, your cognitive abilities probably haven't changed all that much since you were twenty-something. Hang in there mate.
I can't help but think of Donald Knuth, aged 85, sat in his home office somewhere, still chipping away at some of the hardest problems in computer science.
It sounds like your problem is something more temporal. For instance, someone else here mentioned about other stresses and responsibilities in your life for example. It might be that it's just a boring and arduous task, not everyone excels at tasks that are just not that interesting. Besides, I don't think the vast majority of us are good at remembering layers and layers of calls and abstractions.
My advice is, there's probably nothing wrong with your abilities or your brain, just try to work on small sections at a time and don't be hard on yourself. We're not 100% all of the time, there are so many factors that play a part in how we perform on each task.
I'd also say that, 40 isn't particularly old, it's easy to think that when so many engineers are in their mid-20's, but in the grand scheme of things, your cognitive abilities probably haven't changed all that much since you were twenty-something. Hang in there mate.