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The Quest To Find the Longest-Serving Programmer (tnmoc.org)
In 2014, the National Museum of Computing published a blog post in which it tried to find the person who has been programming the longest. At the time, it declared Bill Williams, a 70-year old to be one of the world's most durable programmers, who claimed to have started coding for a living in 1969 and was still doing so at the time of publication. The post has been updated several times over the years, and over the weekend, the TNMC updated it once again. The newest contender is Terry Froggatt of Hampshire, who writes: I can beat claim of your 71-year-old by a couple of years, (although I can't compete with the likes of David Hartley). I wrote my first program for the Elliott 903 in September 1966. Now at the age of 73 I am still writing programs for the Elliott 903! I've just written a 903 program to calculate the Fibonacci numbers. And I've written quite a lot of programs in the years in between, some for the 903 but also a good many in Ada.
Please, these Cobol graybeards are mission-critical. Nobody else knows how the code works, or able to read it, and if something goes wrong the entire thing goes down.
How about longest serving programmer who has kept their skillz up to date and works in something resembling a modern system and language? Something that is transistorized or even better uses integrated circuits.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.