I'm terrified of older web developers. Because I'm becoming one.

Last semester, I took a class with Prof Gerry Sussman (of SICP fame). It was totally mindbending, and seeing his code samples (usually introduced by saying "I was hacking on this last night...") left me with a sense of awe and amazement. I can't even count the number of times I said "I didn't even know that was possible!" upon seeing his code.

This is a man who has been coding since atleast the early 70s, and is still in the top of his form. I would be happy to have even 10% of the skills he has. I think its very sad that a lot of people in the younger generation treat older developers as if they're out of touch and are dinosaurs from a bygone era. Sure they may not know Ruby on Rails or JQuery, but quite a few of them have mastered the timeless concepts and are a great source of wisdom and insight. I would love to work with and be mentored by someone who has "done his time".

I have a strong intent on remaining a coder/tech guy for the rest of my life.

Why? Because the only thing I've gotten a real kick out of, for the past 15 years, is learning new technologies and applying them to projects. I get bored after a few years of working with the same tech.

Sure I've managed some projects and even some people, and still have to occasionally, but it feels like being a fish out of water, not doing something you were born to do.

I suppose there will be a day when you find yourself surrounded by younger people with technical authority over you, because you just couldn't keep up any longer. But maybe there won't, if you don't let it happen?

Web development tools have changed so much that it is hard for a web developer with 20 years experience developing SW (most of which probably wasn't even in web development) to be vastly better than someone with 5 years experience. Contrast that to a C++ developer with 20 years experience to someone with 5 years experience developing C++.

It seems to me, however, that changes in web development are coming more slowly, and it is reasonable to expect that in 10 years the author of this post could be much more productive than someone with 5 years experience.

Time to switch careers I suppose, or become a manager. Hopefully not a bad manager, but there are more bad or average managers than good/outstanding ones.