Excellent point. I do wish you had pointed to some actual statistics, though.

I just spent a couple of years working at a "retirement community" where I was as old as the residents. There were a couple of very healthy residents, such as a Vietnamese doctor (76) who got up every morning and did Tai Chi and an 87-year-old guy who walked two miles around the campus each morning. But most of the residents were rotting away under the burden of a lifetime of bad food and no exercise.

I don't mind the thought of dying, but I want to die reasonably suddenly after a full, active life. Frank Lloyd Wright was brilliant well into his 80's. I just read something about a biotech entrepreneur who started two major companies while in his 70's and 80's.

Exercise may be the fountain of youth.

Working to have a healthy child is a matter of teamwork. True, the doctor thinks he/she is the quarterback, but the parent is the manager. If the players can't sync it is time to rearrange the team components. So, if the quarterback wants to go to a different team...

Medical treatment is often a matter of probability, not proof. Probability is hard to understand for someone who doesn't deal in math a lot. Many parents I've met would rather believe their own superstitions than do the research that would lead them to a reasonable conclusion about their children's health. (For one thing, it is very, very, VERY time-consuming!)

I'm on the side that thinks vaccination does much more good than harm, but I've never had to try to explain an unexplainable case of autism or mental health issue to a parent that wants an answer to, "Why us?"

It was a chorded keyboard featured on the cover of Either Byte or PC Magazine back in 1978 or '79. I thought it was a totally cool device then, and I've kinda been experimenting with variations for the last 7 years.

I got envious of those teenagers texting 60 miles per hour, and so I've almost finished a 4-"plate" Morse Code pad for my Windows7 touchscreen Fujitsu tablet that I hope to get working on my Windows7 Samsung smartphone. One-finger operation, plates for dot, dash, space and erase; and I might be able to finally use my phone with some sort of speed.

I'm going to try this Englebart system because it would make it easier to use my convertible tablet. (I typically use Google Sketchup Pro, and being able to type in dimensions easily without reverting to the on-screen keyboard or converting to laptop configuration might be much easier.)

It seems to me that there should have been a big pile of detached hands somewhere. Martial Law and Civil Law are still supposed to work together.

Some people here deride religion, but real religion is good for society as a whole. (This does not mean that it should be imposed on people by Government.) Religion teaches moral values in a way that Law can't, and in the absence of Law, those without moral values will act in ways detrimental to society. Sharia would have been better than no civil law.

First problem: The games suck as games. The player works through a few levels and then sells the game cause there's no more challenge. Anyone want to buy my used Sudoku?

Second problem: The "gamers" are dumb enough to buy them at high prices. If the games are so disposable, why are you wasting your money?

Third problem: The two previous problems feed on each other. Playing sucky games creates morons. People pay less for a good chess set, deck of cards, or goban and stones and actually get smarter by playing.

Fourth problem: These sucky games could be cloned mechanically with computer-generated artwork and nobody would be the wiser. Thin plots, limited reality, juvenile moral values; yet many semi-intelligent time-wasters go out and buy them rather than make their own. Proof that the Public School System rots your brain.

Fifth problem: CEO's who don't get that you make money by providing what the consumers want, rather than what you can stick the consumer with. (Pun intended.)

Just as I was thinking that this might be the start of a good FORTH machine, I find out that Fish used to work with Chuck Moore. What a coinkydink.

One requirement should be that code documentation, clear enough for a junior programmer or someone from the accounting department to successfully follow from start to conclusion, shall be produced for each component along with the code.

Then, the project leader shall be responsible for seeing that code, and its documentation, is included in the check-off document for each system, subsystem. and function.

Publicly "score" your programmers for the elegance and completeness of each milestone task. If I was the project manager I would probably run each component through Rose or some other UML environment to be included in the documentation (after it is compared with the original/changed design).

Changes should also be documented. So should maintenance changes, but that is usually where I find the least comprehensive documentation. It is the leader/manager's responsibility to make sure the PROJECT is complete, not just workable. It is the developer's responsibility to make sure that his/her portion of the project is complete, not just workable. If the developer can't write a description of what he did that could be understood by a dumb-ass, then he probably doesn't know what he's doing anyway.

There are 'way too many entry points to this discussion. The mass hypnosis of TV and movies undermined Japan's post-war program for a stronger Japan, by "Americanizing" Japanese values. American "reality" TV fosters a view of stupid, immoral Americans, but it also shows the vast difference in wealth between the two nations. This must be a threat to Chinese Government-approved values and economics. Now, 2/3 of the people in Chines TV may be "out-of-work" in whatever way a government-subsidized "production" can exist.

This puts one of China's leading-edge economic industries about where the United States was in 1921.

It's not age and it's not experience. Age is neither a detriment nor an advantage in producing good code. Experience isn't worth shit if all your experience is in writing code in a text editor in some obscure language and the job you are applying for requires you to be familiar with specific production environments like Eclipse or Visual Studio. Any humyuk out of school for a couple years with recent skills in those environments is better qualified than you are.

What should put you over the top is recent, proven experience in thinking and problem-solving. Decide what kind of code you want to write (business and accounting, DB, systems, embedded, etc., etc., and then produce something that shows you are qualified.

Of course, if you have many past years' experience in programming in one of the old standards like C/C++ and you are familiar with the newer production environments, then yes, your age may be an advantage because you have proven experience in thinking and problem-solving in areas that aren't rapidly changing.

Good luck.