If you're talking about the internet, a decade is a long time and an important distinction. We're not talking about a 32 year old dev. I mean hell I know plenty of early 30s folks.
40 years ago was 1976. We're talking about people who were born not too long after we landed on the moon (or even before). There's just not a lot of people that age who both went into programming and are still doing it, as opposed to management or something non-technical entirely.
So while it's not at all surprising to see an early- or mid-30s developer (I work with many), it is very surprising to see a mid-40s developer (I've only ever worked with two, and one had an almost violent aversion to anything except procedural VB).
Programming is a skilled labor, not a profession, in that you are "supposed" to do it for a couple years and then move on. Like teens used to work at McDonalds and give weird looks to the creepy 30 yr old guy still working fast food.
When its not noteworthy for programmers to have an age distribution similar to the greater population, or for experience to be respected instead of being made fun of, then programming will finally become a profession rather than a semi-skilled labor.
Personally I don't mind being made fun of by the kids... I get a lot of money cleaning up their inexperienced mistakes.
Please. That's borderline insulting to people who have to earn a living through actual, physical, labor.
Every programming job I've taken has started with the "Do you see your future self as a senior developer or a manager?" discussion. It's absolutely a viable career path to stay a developer, or at least it is now.
And there's the tired "lol these 30 year old kids don't know what they're doing I'm getting rich fixing their mistakes!!" tripe.
