Well - what a funny post. I have made my living writing computer programs since 1970 - when I was 21. And so many languages: machine code, assembly, fortran, cobol, c, basic, sql, rpg, c++, java, php and so many libraries and constructs. Right now I am working on converting all our servers to guests on debian/kvm and vmware in a cloud, and our sites to drupal 7. knowing php helps with drupal, so I do all I can to teach it to the noobs. but who knows what tomorrow will bring? the predicted end of programming no doubt. someday my shortterm memory will go, and my longterm as well. but until then, i will push our people to think, solve, and code.

It's been a long trip - new languages and architectures every 5 years or so - fortran, assembly, jcl and cobol on the 360's; dibol on the decs; pascal, basic and c on the pc's; asp, java, and php on the net. At the ancient age of 58 I'm still putting out my 10 lines of code a day (actually a lot more than that, grin) and teaching youngsters about linux (linux is like coming home - text based setup and even long sysgens for gentoo - I could tell tales of the lonely joys of debugging ibm os/vs1 sysgens sustained by vending machine coffee and candy bars. And the time the night operator left a pizza slice on the card reader...) A lifetime was never enough to take advantage of the opportunities or debug the systems. The skills will fail, but not for a while please, not with the lovely net to play in!