As a 61-year-old with almost 50 years of programming experience who recently got a new job, I can testify how almost no one wants to hear from an old person. I program for fun, too, and could be doing that full-time if I weren't working.
I'm only employed now because I'm proficient in an older language (APL). Never mind my decades of experience in many other languages and extensive domain knowledge in finance, not that I'm bitter or anything.
> I can testify how almost no one wants to hear from an old person
I love working with people who are more than 40 or 50 years old. My experience is pretty limited in this matter but I have found older people too be more forgiving when I make mistakes.
Also, older people has that art of speaking thing figured out. In my experience, older professional people don't just say "thank you", they tend to say things that are positively meaningful. Even when they reject my proposal, they will make the effort to actually let me down easy and slowly.
Writing this I just realized the counterpoint of this post. With age people are naturally more suited for managerial roles rather then full time technical roles. Understanding programming may give someone an edge, but with age people have more to offer beyond programming, which is management and communication.
IME it's not pure 'ageism', but salary and workplace dynamics. Having had the privilege of working with many older devs, who played a big role in shaping my career...
After the first 2 decades your worth as an individual contributor (or at most, team lead) stagnates. You're probably at the top of the pay grade already, and the older you get the more you'll have to work with more junior people, as 'equals' despite having substantially more experience. It's very hard to give you any sort of career progression. You may be a lot more productive, but your 'multiplier effect' is small compared to a manager, or someone who deals with a lot more stakeholder complexity.
It's even more pronounced in current times where a 25 year old makes 100K (a lot in the UK). They're very unlikely to double their salary over the next 10 years in similar positions. Whereas most people start at 25K.. work their way up to 100K... exec level etc is 200K.
Successful 'pure' programmers who get jobs usually have an infra flavour of the month skillset, or make it clear that they're happy to get paid the same as someone with say 10 years of experience.
Most of them though go into strategy or become contractors.
I'm in the middle and I wonder how I would react if working with a 60yo buddy. I'm not biased much (I'm cool with people of all background and age when I service computers around my area) and I like esoteric/vintage. Which is funny because I'd probably run to spend time near your desk doing some APL pair programming than hearing the 25yo boast about the latest python release at the coffee machine :)
I'm only employed now because I'm proficient in an older language (APL). Never mind my decades of experience in many other languages and extensive domain knowledge in finance, not that I'm bitter or anything.