My experience has been older programmers (myself included) often end up in niche industries, either maintaining existing mature systems or developing specialized applications in areas where they have had long term involvement. Along those lines, this is also the Consultant path.

I was thinking the opposite... someone shut down a Clinton server, not realizing it was the backbone for the entire State Department.

Not all that cynical, really. The history of IT is filled with stories about massive Government and Military IT upgrades that either don't pan out or run severely over budget and end up cancelled or drastically scaled down. For instance, air traffic control modernization has been a big issue since the Carter administration: https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... Then there's the IRS modernization: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/... And various military software overhauls: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12... https://arstechnica.com/inform...

I have to admit that the announcement was one of the most strangely worded announcements. It was really hard to tell whether the end of the licensing program meant that the format was free or that it was totally unavailable for use. Glad to see that it was the former, after all.