Is programming knowledge related to age? An exploration of stack overflow

Becoming an expert at programming is thought to take an estimated 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. But what happens after that? Do programming experts continue to develop, do they plateau, or is there a decline at some point? A diversity of opinion exists on this matter, but many seem to think that aging brings a decline in adoption and absorption of new programming knowledge. We develop several research questions on this theme, and draw on data from StackOverflow (SO) to address these questions. The goal of this research is to support career planning and staff development for programmers by identifying age-related trends in SO data. We observe that programmer reputation scores increase relative to age well into the 50's, that programmers in their 30's tend to focus on fewer areas relative to those younger or older in age, and that there is not a strong correlation between age and scores in specific knowledge areas.