Sorry, I don't agree. I have not been in the industry for 30 years, but I have been programming since a very young age on similar hardware to your Commodore 64. No I cannot translate the skills I learned when writing Basic for that 8 bit architecture directly to the modern web app project I am working on. I can however relate better to memory constrained environments such as Arduino's and MSP430's. I can say that getting started with a very limited piece of hardware and a very limited language did get my interest peaked to keep exploring what I could do.
Later I got into Linux and FreeBSD. While I have never worked with any BSD professionally (other than OS X, but that doesn't count), I do think that knowing how FreeBSD works makes me a better Linux user/admin/developer. Certain ideas (kqueue, core system vs packages, etc.) are good concepts to keep in mind when developing for a platform that does not have them.
I also learned Turbo-PASCAL and used Delphi for a spell. While not directly relevant, they did have quite an influence on today's languages and development environments. NetBeans which I did use professionally for a bit was a far cry form Deplhi but knowing both made NetBeans easier to use.
But all that aside, the point of having years of experience is not about enhancing your current knowledge. It's about enhancing the process of acquiring knowledge, organizing it, and using it. Someone that knows JavaScript is going to get coded under the table by someone who knows JavaScript, C, Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, Python, etc. In fact I would wager that someone who knew C, Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, and Python but not JavaScript would in the long run beat out a JavaScript expert simply because the penalty to learn a new paradigm is much smaller than perceived, while the benefit of being able to think in a multi-paradigm fashion is a huge benefit.
Finally, the mechanic thing: I am comparing a veteran mechanic, with say 20 years experience, including current experience with latest cars vs a mechanic with 1 year experience with just modern cars. I listen to CarTalk, the NPR program, and they had a few very interesting stories on there. For example, there was a woman who called and said that whenever she turned on the fans in her car it smelled like gasoline and it very often happened after she got her car worked on at the dealership. The suggested reason was that when the mechanic worked on it, he put dirty parts on the cowl of the car where the air intake is and some gasoline and oil dripped into it. This is something experience teaches you and it has nothing to do with the modern chips.
Later I got into Linux and FreeBSD. While I have never worked with any BSD professionally (other than OS X, but that doesn't count), I do think that knowing how FreeBSD works makes me a better Linux user/admin/developer. Certain ideas (kqueue, core system vs packages, etc.) are good concepts to keep in mind when developing for a platform that does not have them.
I also learned Turbo-PASCAL and used Delphi for a spell. While not directly relevant, they did have quite an influence on today's languages and development environments. NetBeans which I did use professionally for a bit was a far cry form Deplhi but knowing both made NetBeans easier to use.
But all that aside, the point of having years of experience is not about enhancing your current knowledge. It's about enhancing the process of acquiring knowledge, organizing it, and using it. Someone that knows JavaScript is going to get coded under the table by someone who knows JavaScript, C, Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, Python, etc. In fact I would wager that someone who knew C, Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, and Python but not JavaScript would in the long run beat out a JavaScript expert simply because the penalty to learn a new paradigm is much smaller than perceived, while the benefit of being able to think in a multi-paradigm fashion is a huge benefit.
Finally, the mechanic thing: I am comparing a veteran mechanic, with say 20 years experience, including current experience with latest cars vs a mechanic with 1 year experience with just modern cars. I listen to CarTalk, the NPR program, and they had a few very interesting stories on there. For example, there was a woman who called and said that whenever she turned on the fans in her car it smelled like gasoline and it very often happened after she got her car worked on at the dealership. The suggested reason was that when the mechanic worked on it, he put dirty parts on the cowl of the car where the air intake is and some gasoline and oil dripped into it. This is something experience teaches you and it has nothing to do with the modern chips.