When I was 7 years old, the Big Scary Thing In The Future was cursive writing. Once you hit 2nd grade, teachers were going to start tearing up your homework unless it was written in cursive.

The next year, it was "3rd grade" when teachers would start tearing up non-cursive papers, then 4th, 5th, 6th and "definitely in junior high". But it never happened in reality.

In my 20s, the Big Scary Thing In The Future was ageism in tech. Once you hit 30, you'd never find work again in this industry.

Then it was 35. Then 40.

I've given up listening. Every year, in addition to getting better at what I do, I find that more people want to pay me more money to come program computers for them.

Now it's certainly possible that the real number is 45, and you'll find me living in a cardboard box and begging for nickels at the off-ramp in a few years. But at this point I'm not overly worried about this particular myth.