I wonder if the "drop dead age" is getting older? I'm 44, and I cut my teeth on the first 8-bit home computers in junior high school. Most programmers ten or more years older presumably got their start on mainframes, likely programming COBOL, FORTRAN, and/or assembler. I can see how someone looking for Windows C++ programmers in 1995 might have looked askance at an old COBOL expert.
On the other hand, it seems to me what most people are doing today doesn't look that much different than 1995. Sure, the tools are fancier, the resources much greater. But it's still largely GUIs on top of C- and Lisp-like languages. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but it seems to me there was a lot more fundamental change from 1975 to 1995 than from 1995 to present.
On the other hand, it seems to me what most people are doing today doesn't look that much different than 1995. Sure, the tools are fancier, the resources much greater. But it's still largely GUIs on top of C- and Lisp-like languages. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but it seems to me there was a lot more fundamental change from 1975 to 1995 than from 1995 to present.