I agree! Young programmers today have it REALLY EASY... when I was in my 20's, it was the late 80's and everything you wrote was original. There was no internet, no github, no codebase we were taught and got in the habbit of writing reusable functions so you could use them in other programs. When you bought the Microsoft C compiler, it came with a library of manuals. We used to hire engineers based on how many they memorized, because the more they had memorized, the less time they would spend function searching. Today, all the reusable functions are online, the manuals are online, programmers today just patch together the methods we wrote in my generation, put together a UI, debug and they have a program. The only "real" programming comes in those rare cases where the code is not available online. The outcome, more programs are published...but are they comprised of lines of code written? I would estimate the real number is less than 10% for most applications!

Engineer is one who can see the "big picture" and build an application, since an application is the inter-workings of hundreds of algorithms, a programmer is one who can code the algorithms that are needed to work together to build the application. We find we can find a lot of good programmers, but, it is very hard to find people that are good engineers...start with a blank canvas and build something. As for age, the good news is everything is online today! If you forget a function and how to use it, simply use Google and up pops the solution and hundreds of examples. It is much easier to be a programmer these days because you simply don't have to remember anything. I remember 20+ years ago we would even give quizzes to prospective programmers to see how many commands and functions they knew, using the logic that the more they knew the faster the could work since they wouldn't have to constantly look commands up in a reference book. But, today, it simply doesn't matter...in fact it is actually good when they look up things on Google because it shows them command they are searching for and algorithms that use the function in ways they maybe hadn't thought about.