Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones, which makes it harder for older people who do to get the chance to prove themselves.
"Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones..." - this is demonstrably ageist. People performing a mid-life career change can be as focussed and driven to succeed in IT as anyone; the determination to acquire and master new skills is, in my view, a personality thing, not an age-related thing.
FWIW - My only concern with older folks is that they’re either jaded, stuck in their ways technologically, or obstinate towards being managed by people younger than them. Strong opinions held strongly is a net negative. This isn’t everyone or even a majority, but it’s quite a few.
Again, (mostly) stereotyping:
"jaded" - I'd argue this hits a lot of front end developers after about 5 years. How many new frameworks have there been in the last 5 years? There comes a point when any sane person will look at the newest "killer" framework and decide to wait a couple of years before investing time in learning it, just in case next year's "killer" framework turns out to be more fun to learn.
"stuck in their ways" - this is more a personality thing, I think. Most people will find their comfort zone pretty quickly, and then get grumpy when asked/required to venture outside of it. Risk aversion and/or laziness doesn't, in my view, increase significantly with age.
"obstinate towards being managed" - this one is a problem that everyone has to face as they grow older. The sad fact (from what I've seen in my age group) is that some people just cannot come to terms with the ageing process, that there's going to be younger people who are better placed to do a team-leader/manager job than they are (because: longer experience in the industry). But that is something that can be worked on - the important thing is to demonstrate a willingness to at least give it a go, offer support to the younger manager (be a wise owl, not an old owl), and be an excellent team player. At least that's my attitude.
In other words: not only is there no hard data behind this view; there isn't any (from a gut perspective) that much of a correlation -- but it's a strong opinion, strongly held nonetheless.
Strong opinions like your opinion on older folks?
Most old people don't need to learn as many new things. It's called "experience."
... are you sure about that? I'd avoid sweeping generalizations, it does not help your argument.
At the same time I'm much more concious about spending my thinking energy, and because of my experience I'm making much more money than when I was younger _despite_ my slower thinking.
Discrimination involves hate, and I definately not hate old people, just accept the facts of life (and I'm also hoping for a cure for aging).
Not always, no. That would give an unworkably narrow definition.
But yeah, just today there was a comment here on Hacker News saying (I'm paraphrasing): I learnt C then C++ then Java, then enough was enough. Which is just sad, that's like going from oatmeal to porrige.
Learning C, then C++, then Rust, then Java, then Ruby (rails), then Objective-C, then Swift, then JavaScript, then Angular, then React, then Flutter, then ....
Depending on the timeframe in which all that learning happens, there's simply no way you can reach expert level with such a diversified knowledge base.
What are you talking about? I’ve checked in production code in 4 languages in a day.
Once you learn your first few languages you should be able to learn the new syntax of a language in a day or two and a good portion of their idioms in the next month (as you know more languages you’ll notice what’s unique about each language and glean idioms from online tutorials and your local codebases).
Being a polyglot is a huge part of many in our industry, especially full stack development. For one project alone I had to work with a backend that was part Java and part Go that hosted customers’ Node backend. I oversaw client SDKs in Objective-C, Java, and C++ and helped prototype the server-side SDK for Go. That’s not fatigue, it’s enjoyable and a skill I can offer my team. Sure I get rusty with a language, but it doesn’t take long to blow off the dust with a skill.