Older Programmers Are Hard to Find...

I've noticed this phenomenon myself: there aren't enough 50+ year old programmers.  What do I mean by “not enough”?  Take me as an example.  I turned 60 years old last year, and was still gainfully employed as a programmer.  If I had followed a normal career progression (I didn't, but never mind that), I'd have graduated from college in about 1974 or so.  There was a cohort of engineers who became programmers who graduated in that same year.  Where are they?  There aren't enough 60 year old programmers this year to account for that cohort.

This article explores this phenomenon with some actual data (Stack Overflow membership).  I must point out, though, that the Stack Overflow data could easily be systematically biased.  I'm not a member, for example – and it could easily be the case that older programmers are generally less interested in things like Stack Overflow...