Why? Programming as a bottom-of-the-org-chart employee is boring and powerless. Every 5 years you have to re-learn almost everything because the fads change, but the substance doesn't change.

Today we need a 16 layer deep toolchain to create a HTML page because everything is javascript and dynamic and slower than generating server-side HTML, but it's The True Way Forward (ignoring the last 8 True Ways Forward we've had since 2002).

When you're competing against 22 year olds for job roles that didn't exist 6 months ago, the 22 year old has just has much experience in the new framework or toolchain or platform as you do at 35. They probably have even more experience because they have less to "unlearn" and more free time to understand all the quirks. They are more excited about learning it for the first time than you are about re-learning it for the 8th time.

Now we're using Go? Except it's no better than what we were using 10 years ago? But everybody else likes it, so we have to like it to? Great, let's kill my productivity for 8 months while I re-write all our systems and have them become less maintainable than they currently are.

I hear gardening is relaxing.