Is Computer Programming a Good Job for Retirees?

braindrainbahrain asks: "Ask Slashdot has been rife with career advice lately, so maybe I can get some too. I hit a milestone recently, the big five oh, and the realization of retirement is starting to settle in. The trouble is, I don't want to sit around, play golf, or even travel that much. I work in a technical field, but I have always enjoyed programming. Indeed, I do it as a hobby. I wonder what you readers would think about programming as a post retirement job. It seems well suited for a retiree, one could do contract work for a few months of the year, in some cases work from home even. By way of background, I have worked in hardware engineering for a very long time, and have pursued graduate study almost regularly (two Masters degrees so far). Should I begin preparing for a post-retirement career in computer science?"

That depends

[plover]

Should I begin preparing for a post-retirement career in computer science?

I don't know, are you willing to relocate to India?

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

And in dog years, you are 350, which is very very very old.

Just great....

[rice_web]

Even more competition in the workplace? Oh hell no....

While we're pondering cre-azy ideas, how about we revive that euthanasia debate?

Let me answer with...

[Anonymous Coward]

A resounding NO! You see, some of us are finishing up school, and about to enter the workplace, and um... yea just don't do it! The following code snippet might explain: //please set the following flags:
if (this.getAge() 23) {
          this.jobSecurity(true);
          this.jobCompetition(false);
}

Excellent idea

[ishmaelflood]

The competition from Sudoku-playing denture-suckers should reduce the wages for this essentially clerical job down to a realistic level. Their maturity will ensure that they need less admin than the whippersnappers, so wages for IT managers should drop as well.

Sadly, since they will tend to drop dead during a project, the lost art of commenting code will need to be reintroduced. In order to make sure that this gets done each senior citizen/coder will be assigned an unemployed baby-face, who will make cups of tea, issue pills, and remind them not to dribble on the keyboard. Every hour the baby-face will insist that the old codger comments the previous hour's work, and archives it.

One day the fossil will collapse across the desk, at which point the baby-face will push the body to one side, and take over the programming job. She, in her turn will be assigned a baby-face.