And often, he's way into whatever the latest language is. He builds games, software for organizing pills and bills, and has designed and rebuilt his own editor several times.
Honestly, the guy's my hero.
He makes (pretty cool) side-scrollers for this grandchildren, tools for himself. He sometimes complains that he's not sure what to build, but he figures it out. He also has a Mac and a Linux box (running Gentoo, I think). That keeps him busy!
He's written his own editor ("I want it the way I want it!") maybe four times in different languages, just because. He's always teasing me for being a vi user ("You're stuck in the 70s!")
That's awesome! I'd love to hear his thoughts :)
I'm coming up on 50, so all of my friends' parents are roughly the same age. The big crackup for me is that they're all worried about their parents falling for a phishing attack or having to update operating systems that haven't seen an update in ten years.
When I call my dad, he wants to get deep into compiler theory. Or talk about Rust. Or moon about how the world would have been so much better if Brendan Eich had just implemented Scheme. Or he'll talk about how much he loves TeX.
You know, he complains that he's not as sharp as he used to be. He's always warning me to take care of my body, because "mens sana in corpore sano!" But really, I just don't worry about him at all.
He's also one of the happiest people I know, and absolutely one of the most well read (I'm an English professor; I'm surrounded by well-read people. It's kind of amazing how many books he's read in his life).
Being a geek, he has his Apple watch set up to remind him to go walk around every hour, and that tends to keep it at bay. But he really can't work in the shop any more.
And honestly (just to brag on my dad a bit more) the way he said goodbye to all that struck me as really impressive. He loved woodworking, but he didn't weep and mourn or go into a depression when he couldn't do it anymore. He just shrugged and said, "Well, I guess it's on to my other hobbies!"
That's how I want to be.