I'm 37, been a PHP Web Dev for 12 years. I love doing it but am concerned as I get older, I'm falling behind. I'm not exposed to different tech in my job but am doing courses to vary my skill set (AWS with Docker, vue.js etc)

Is anyone else here over 40 and doing dev work? Any obstacles you found? Or younger peeps, what’s your opinion of older devs? Should I be concerned?

As a php dev with similar time under my belt - well not the 40 part yet., I've found expanding to other stacks has given me more enjoyment with the work I do.

Don't get me wrong I'm a PHP dev any day of the week but having other languages and stacks to play with is refreshing and compliment the knowledge you already have.

>>> I love doing it

I love quoting people out of context. (:

Ageism is definitely a thing in the dev world. Most people I know in the field have said that they've felt as soon as they get much past 40, they're seen as less relevant, less willing to learn new tech, and more likely to demand unrealistic salaries when applying for jobs.

Like all stereotypes, part of this is unfortunately true - I'm mainly in the Java space, and I've seen a *lot* of older devs who refuse to move past old SOAP based web services, Java 5 language features, and standard Java EE.

Then again, I've seen a lot of devs who regularly take training and manage projects to prove that's *not* the case, using Java 11, Spring boot, project reactor, K8s and so on - and they tend to do quite well for themselves.

There's also a third category that does quite well - legacy software is around for a long time, and some people are quite happy just receiving big bucks to maintain those systems until they retire. Not for me, but it's definitely a viable option if that's your thing.

I am 40 and feel your fear. Just keep learning new technologies and create sample projects and post them on Github. Also if possible contribute to other open source projects on Github. I understand that this all could be very difficult to achieve but do what you can

anything learn without any fear is the best , there is no fix time to learn.

Well I'm about to hit the big 50, I've been a developer since 93 and I honestly have not seen any evidence of ageism. Age doesn't make you unemployable, stale experience does. If your job doesn't give you the opportunity to use new technologies, if you feel you are standing still, it is your responsibility to do something about it. Get a new job, learn a new skill, talk to your boss, but don't stay still

I started my career as a Lotus Notes Developer and remained so for about 7 years. Then I moved to Java, Web Development and worked on that for another 5 years. Over the last 7 years, I worked on Angular, Docker, NodeJs, Hadoop, ElasticSearch, Firebase... yada yada.

Lessons learnt:

- You need to rebase yourself every 5-7 years.

- All your prior experience holds great value

- Learn to re-purpose your skill in a different environment or business domain.

- The wisdom gained from many years of programming and cross-skill development is un-paralleled.

So change your place of work or skill profile.