If you look at a variety of fields, you see that people within certain age groups tend to do better. Most productive ages for: Gymnasts: teens, Mathematicians: teens to late-20s, Physicists: early 20s-early 30s, Biologists: late 30s-40s, Literary authors: 40s to 60s.
I prefer a binary distillation:
"Physical" - best from 18 to 40, peaking around 30 (with some exceptions)
"Mental" - best from 13 to 90, peaking almost anytime.
Almost every field is a combination, but I consider programming and business more "mental" than "physical". So as long as you take care of yourself, there's no reason why anyone's best work can't be ahead of them.
I'd be very surprised to find the best basketball player peaking at 40, but not surprised at all to find a programmer who did the same thing.
The data suggests to me that "mental" has at least two, narrower peaks - the Mathematician/Physicist peak (maths are theroetical physics are quite similar in practice) is quite distinct from the Novelist's peak, and that therefor they exercise different mental abilities.
I prefer a binary distillation:
"Physical" - best from 18 to 40, peaking around 30 (with some exceptions)
"Mental" - best from 13 to 90, peaking almost anytime.
Almost every field is a combination, but I consider programming and business more "mental" than "physical". So as long as you take care of yourself, there's no reason why anyone's best work can't be ahead of them.
I'd be very surprised to find the best basketball player peaking at 40, but not surprised at all to find a programmer who did the same thing.