But the two languages are very similar.
I get your point though, it's not clear how much you gain by doing 20 years of PHP over 10. I think this isn't unique to programming - is a lawyer with 20 years of experience necessarily better than one with 10? An accountant? A nurse? And so on and so on. I do think looking at myself I am much better in my 10th year than I am in my 5th - not only in specific technical tools but how I approach things, how I relate to others etc. So some of the gains are in soft skills which are super important to be effective.
However will I keep improving at this pace? Probably not. Who says I have to keep improving exponentially?
Actually yes I would expect them to. They should keep up to date with changes - laws change all the time. New equipment is created for medicine all the time. These might be pretty fundamental and are not soft skills.
Maybe the base "lawyering" or "nursing" does change but they'll have seen a lot more examples and be able to pattern match quicker.
Also I'd rather a 20 year nurse was the Charge Nurse rather than a 5 or 10 year one, I'd expect they'd know more how to lead others (although time served isn't always an indicator of a good leader).
> Maybe the base "lawyering" or "nursing" does change but they'll have seen a lot more examples and be able to pattern match quicker.
They've also been burned out by being 20 years in the field. Motivation is a very very crucial thing for success and motivation often times declines due to burnout. Yes said lawyer saw more cases as mine than his younger colleague but he might not be super motivated to fight for me in court as he was 20 years ago, and in any case there are constant tiny changes to laws that make the 20 years experience worth less.
Btw I think 55 year old lawyers/accountants who look for a job face pretty much the same discrimination as software developers - they are expected to be director level or there's not that many jobs for them. This thing is definitely not unique to our profession...ageism is a thing everywhere.
