At the same time, I’ve been programming for fifty years as of this year. I started programming at 18 as a student at Tulane University. A math major who decided to give computers a try because “I heard you can make money doing that.” Fifty years might be some kind of record too. All through my career, going back to my mid-30s, people have written me off as too old to develop software. I always resisted this, and resented people playing that trick. It wasn’t true in my 30s or 40s or 50s, or even 60s, but I can see a day when it will be true. Programming depends on human memory. Over time the machine you’re building on becomes more complex, the interconnections between the components become harder to grok, and you often don’t remember why you did this or that. You resist making changes that could bring the whole thing down. So evolution of software becomes slower. There is a reason you can’t keep pitching in baseball, or being a basketball star after 40. In software the time barrier is higher, but it is there, I can feel it. #