I don’t know many details, but he’s been using Java for 10 years or so, and he’s not particularly interested in the new hotness. 10ish years ago I asked him how to learn to code and I know he in turn asked his brother, who’s a tad younger and I think is a CS professor somewhere in the Midwest. He ended up giving me Learn to Program Ruby by Chris Pine.

Edit: One more thing is that he’s the most intellectually well-rounded person I’ve ever met, a characteristic which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was common in programmers with more than a couple dozen years of experience.