> wish there was one for us old guys 50+

I don't know about 50+ who code together. But if you're interested in a community for old folks who enjoy reading computing stuff together, there is a small and cozy reading lounge on IRC (and Matrix) here: https://bitwise.codeberg.page/

2 years ago I created a private slack and invited a bunch of old colleagues (in both senses), we now meet weekly to hack on side projects, participate in CTFs, all low expectations. Sometimes we just catchup and bitch about work.

I assume you know about 2600? Its a very fun and global hacker community, with monthly meetings, yearly conferences, a radio show, and great magazine. 2600.com

present day demoparties (as in, demoscene events) are pretty much that these days

Go to a tech conference of your prefered language?

they are too far away and too expensive

There are a ton of open source things to participate in and contribute to. Obviously anything that involves travel costs money.

Contribute to an open source project?

Fosdem in Brussels is free. But that might still be far away for you?

But why does it have to be "for" a certain age? Just ditch ageism.

It's not that simple. Depending on the culture, interacting with people of drastically different ages can be uncomfortable for all involved. If you add the general lack of soft skills among programmers, it's easy to see why someone would prefer a "safer" group that's closer to their age over the more general community.

Let those people have their groups, fine. But there's no rule saying you have to cater to them. There's all kinds of people including people who enjoy going out of their comfort zone and experiencing "danger."

I think they call that GitHub.