Not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean at what age one should give up trying to write software after some years of being in the job? Or are you asking about moving from those you are calling "ideal" languages. Please rephrase a little bit. And what exactly do you mean by ideal languages?

A couple of minutes ago I replied in length to a thread that is closely related to this. Check it out http://wazua.co.ke/forum...s&t=13640#post195741

Well I think the biggest problem we have in Kenya is that we don't have a properly developed industry around ICT and by the way ICT as a term is very very broad.

Now that you mentioned Java, lets consider software engineering for purposes of having a conclusive discussion.

The lack of a developed industry around software typically means that people are not able to progress from programmers to more generalist roles such as software architects , specialists, researchers etc.

Generally speaking, architects are in their 40s and above. There is no school for becoming a system or software architect, it comes as a result of long experience.

ICT can give a full lifetime career path. I can show you quite a number of people on linkedin who have retired from these roles -these people are mostly abroad.

It just comes down to an immature industry in Kenya (if you're located there).

The oldest software engineer I have met and worked with yet is 56 and it shows in his work. Like New-farer says, it takes time to become a great software engineer (or architect). Only experience can teach you that. But then you've got to go through all of the "low-level" programming stuff before you get there, and that too calls for time and patience and persistence. And passion too. But the thing is that the whole software engineering world is build around some basic and timeless concepts and those are the ones that are most important to get right - data structures, algorithms, design patterns... Once you are beyond those then you can mostly create software in any language for any problem domain. That's the long answer to your question. The short answer is "for as long as you are not senile!".

Pick a language or two, and stick to it. Look at Twitter. They've grown their ruby-on-rails platform to great heights, even though many techies(including myself) find ruby to be a hot pile of poo.

Same with wazua: they've grown into a pretty large website using asp and other Microsoft nonsense ;)