Several, actually. About 20% of the programmers I've worked with have been over 50, with the majority of the rest being in their 30s. Two of the over-50s (I think one's close to 60 now) actually made it to VP of Engineering in various companies and then dropped back to a programmer role because that's what they wanted to do.
The ranks do thin out, and I think programming is largely a young-person's game. But the people who are really passionate about it when they're 20 tend to be the ones that stick around for a lifetime.
And at least in Massachusetts, older programmers are respected. Maybe it's different in Silicon Valley; I've heard the culture is much more youth-oriented there (one of the reasons it appeals to me, actually). But here you're expected to pay your dues, and senior software engineers really are senior.
Precisely. Computing has been changing rapidly throughout history, but the advent of the PC was a big change, because it created a massive cohort of people like me who had encountered computers even before high school.
How old is that cohort? Let's see... if you were fourteen when the Altair came out in 1975, today you would be... 47.
There have been massive fluctuations in interest in computer science since the 1970s, so it's a poor assumption that 50-somethings would be under-represented in the industry.
If programmers were staying in the field, we should probably see a distribution where there is a good representation of 20-somethings from the early 80s (the last major boom) -- those people would be around 40 today. I don't see that; I see a lot of 20-somethings, and a few 30-somethings, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember. There seem to be other forces at work.
The ranks do thin out, and I think programming is largely a young-person's game. But the people who are really passionate about it when they're 20 tend to be the ones that stick around for a lifetime.
And at least in Massachusetts, older programmers are respected. Maybe it's different in Silicon Valley; I've heard the culture is much more youth-oriented there (one of the reasons it appeals to me, actually). But here you're expected to pay your dues, and senior software engineers really are senior.