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Programming should be like this. When you're in your twenties thinking you know everything you should have have an old master slapping you on the writs telling you that even if you think you are - you actually are not ready building real systems yet. ;-)

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I don't think programming is any different. It takes years and years to build an intuition for what works and what doesn't, to develop the theoretical knowledge that allows you to immediately know when your problem can be solved by a well-known algorithm (or when your problem has already been reduced to the halting problem!), to be able to predict from observation where the root of a bug will be found, etc. You have to read a lot of code and write a lot of code to be able to develop taste.

Older programmers may not know the latest hip language and frameworks, but are closer to the essence of their craft. Past experiences open the mind to patterns and ways of doing the 20yo code monkey can't quite conceive yet.

And 20 year olds have a perspective of the world that older generations can't appreciate. Who's to say which has more value?

We shouldn't glorify youth or age, just quality.

That may simply be because they know better ;-)

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