Will you be good at programming when old?

I recently met a fresh computer science graduate. I asked him about how his job. He said, “The job is good but I am going to leave it.”

I asked if he is making less money or something else? He said. “No. I want to change my career from programming to something else.”

“I cannot imagine myself doing programming when I am old. It’s a lot of stress. It’s a job for young guys”, he said.

It brings out all my fears of my earlier programming career. I used to think about how will I survive that if I had to work hard and learn a lot of things when I am 50+ years old. My internal belief was older people cannot program.

Now after a decade of programming experience I can witness that I am only getting better.

With experience, I have developed certain core skills like architecture, design, testing, and debugging that I can learn any new technology rapidly.

Also, I researched aged programmers who are working professionally. To my surprise, they are still good at their job.

One phrase that helped me understand the dynamics:

“Medical doctor who is old does not mean that he cannot diagnose and write a prescription. The same is true for aged programmers.”

Even programmers who move into management roles love to do programming as a hobby. One of my senior manager who is about to retire and is 60+ years old told me that after retirement he will be programming for his side projects.

Fear of programming as an aged person is related to job security. This fear is justified because at the start professional programming is hard and one has to learn a lot to get the wings.

So they assume from initial hard work that their life will be full of anxiety and as they age they will be unable to compete with the younger programmers.

But the opposite is true. With experience in programming, they get better and more valuable.

What do you think about programming when you are 50+ years of age?