I'm about to turn 53. I spend most of my day coaching younger programmers at Facebook (because they're almost all younger). We pair program and talk. I work on speculative projects, some consumer-oriented, some programming tools and some infrastructure. I also research software design and the diffusion of innovation.

I took a 10 year excursion into being a guru, but I'm technical now and intend to stay that way. I love programming. I've never been a manager. I suppose that capped my pay, but I'd rather be satisfied with my work. I haven't noticed a pay drop with age, but my experience may not be typical.

The most important factor for me has been to keep coding. It gets harder. I have noticed a definite drop in my long-term memory, concentration, and general cognition, but I compensate by being better at picking important problems, being able to pattern match a large library of experiences, and not panicking. As Miracle Max said, I've seen worse.

I started learning Haskell a couple of years ago, and that has really helped expand my programming style. I still don't like it, but it's good for me. I'm also learning React and the reactive style of coding UIs. That's also a brain stretcher.