This seems like a very bad assessment of software engineering forgetting the cursial reason why older programmer have trouble finding job. The fact is that computer science is only really been a legitament profession for maybe 40-30 years. When it first was taught no one could of predicted the speed at which software engineering would become a dominate force in the world's economy nor seen how fast technology changes. So in the begginning computer science was viewed like math, physics, or any science it was taught so that you learned the basic first then you learned the newer and more innovative things. This is no longer the case. Yes most programmer will experience c/c++, some may even lean x86 and MIPS, but we now know that computer science require a constant change. It is no longer acceptable to just know c/c++ you must learn new languages all the time. Whether you decide to learn node,js, ruby, scala, or what ever cutting edge languages we are not groom to pick up languages in 2 weeks if needed to. Most great programmer are taught to teach themselves the newer technologies to stay relevant. Something I see my professor in college never really learned.