It is like being overqualified for a job: You have all the skills needed yet your motivation and personality is questioned.
I realize that good companies recognize talent, and that überhackers with brand name projects behind them will always be in demand, but sadly the world is made up of different realities.
Even the "keep up with technology" people know in their hearts that these articles are correct. Everyone knows programmers have a half-life, they just are in disagreement about when it kicks in. Nearly everyone would be surprised to discover a 60 year old programmer who was still gainfully employed. 50 is really pushing it, 40 is pushing it, and 35 is starting to push it. In contrast, nobody would think it was weird to see a 40, 50 or even 60 year old doctor or lawyer.
That's half the story, but it's a big part of it.
The other half is that it's an area with gradual drift out & little drift in.
That half needs some explaining but it seems like more of a young man's game then it is. It's easy to get behind. If you're out for 2 years, it's daunting to get back in. The opposite is true for some domain (like medicine). You get very little drift in to the field (more programmers become HR people or sales people then the other way around). It's a first career, not a second.
My point, I suppose, is that your experience must still count for something within certain domains. Right? Or am I wrong on that, too?
I think you'll find that in industries where safety & reliability is critical, experience is always a great benefit for the applicant.
I wonder how much this is to do with the relative newness of programming as a profession. Medicine and law have had a very long time to develop systems to train the young, then identify and reward the knowledgable and talented. Perhaps in a few decades 20-something and 30-something programmers will be regarded in much the same way as their law and medicine practising counterparts.
Also, programmers who have been working for >30 years (who started before the mid-late 70s) didn't have the option of learning to program at home, on a PC. PCs caused the number of new, but not potentially good, programmers entering the job market to spike.
A dot com crash and several cube jobs later, those same folk are living in better homes and driving luxury suvs while I am pondering how I can escape the hell that is a modern day software cubicle job....Guess the joke really is on us.
That said, while I appreciate your sentiment, I know in my heart that the author is right. All of my friends from college have moved out of programming. Many have left the industry completely -- and we're not even that old! The bottom line is that there's little or no cost advantage to hiring an older coder, when I have t-shirts that are older than the most popular development environments.
Every once in a while, some young geek chimes into these conversations with the observation that one needs only "keep up with technology" to stay relevant in the industry. But even ignoring the fact that "keeping up" is usually easier said than done, the economics just don't work out. My friends who went to medical school are finishing their residencies and starting in private practice; my friends who went to law school are making partner. In most industries, you're just beginning your career when you're in your early 30s. In software, you're already old enough to be a conversation topic.