Over 50 programmer here. What I bring to the table is not only programming skills, but life experience, people skills, and a desire to mentor others since retirement is on the horizon. Keeping up-to-date is important, but just being around as one of the old men in the office is also important. Not the CTO, rather the one who knows, or who knows who else knows the answer to a question.
Does it get easier, or are ( different )algorithms still as hard to code as they were in the first years of programming?
( Not a troll. )
That was probably a troll, but I'll bite. See, that's what I mean. Anyone can code a quick sort or a sobel filter. But when to avoid the sort in the first place, or how to build an image processing pipeline for CPU,GPU,FPGA, asic and when to use each requires years of experience, its not just the algorithm, its the complication and maintainability and security of the resulting system as installed on the hardware
They go into the Home for Burnt-out COBOL programmers.