No place for the old? Is software development a young person's game?

With age and experience comes wisdom, or so the saying goes, but when it comes to being a developer is it a job you can pursue into middle age?

There are plenty of stats and anecdotes that suggest the average age of developers skews young.

Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, has long argued there is an upper age limit on the profession, writing that"statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40". Just last year, an ageism lawsuit against Google claimed the median age of the firm's employees was 29.

Looking beyond Silicon Valley, recent surveys have also found that developers tend to be younger worldwide. This week, a survey by Stack Overflow found that, on average, developers in London have been coding for just under eight years. Globally, average coding experience is even lower, about six and a half years. The implication that most developers are relatively recent starters chimes with another result from Stack Overflow's global survey of developers, which put the average age of coders at under 30.

Link to article: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/no-place-for-the-old-is-software-development-a-young-persons-game/