A little background, since it can be part of my point fo view.

I'm a C#/Java programmer with age of 23, coding since my 18's. I started studying C and working with Cobol, and after 1 year I quickly moved to C#/Java Web Development, and have worked with it in about 3/4 companies. (I've just moved again)

In my (brief) professional career I encountered some older programmers, all the times it was very hard to work with them, since I was way better programmer than they. And it is not about just the language skills, some of them had seriously problems understanding basic logic. Now I wonder how theese programmer get jobs on the market since (I imagine) they have more expenses, and thus have to make more money, and are really counter-productives. In theese examples, others project member have to constantly keep stoping for helping them out.

All the times, they eventually quit... So I wonder...

1. May the aging process slow down the learning rate and logic thinking?
2. Does the programmer has to, or at least should, move to a management area before getting old?

Please, my intention is not to be disrespectful with older persons. I am fully aware that this is NOT the case of all older programmers, I often see around very good old programmers on the net, I just never met them for close.