I was 56. It is keeping my brain plastic and paying the bills.

52 when I switched. I went it to the deep-end. Now 56, full-time Elixir. Learned most by reading existing code and articles from hex. Now I think in terms of processes, not objects. Never too late to switch.

I was 39 when I went all-in on Elixir, but I was not a professional programmer before that. Elixir clicked instantly. Three years later, my only regret is the time I wasted on Python before discovering Elixir in the summer of 2022.

See also: 2023 is my "Year of Elixir" • OVERBRING Labs

I was a long-time admirer of Elixir (via Erlang) but took me a long time to work professionally in it.

I had around 30yrs experience all told, working mostly on server-side systems (C++, Java, later some C#) but also in the embedded space, including working at MSFT, first in MSR and then as a Principal Engineer on the now-dead-but-was-very-fun Hololens project.

I first looked at Erlang around the late 90s / early 2000s, I could see the potential but it was difficult to land any work in it, in any of my roles. It was either too risky to introduce or just outside the set of ‘acceptable’ technologies.

After returning to Australia from the US, I did a stint at an HFT shop (lots more server-side C++) and by sort of accident ended up working for a security research company and at some point they needed some software to help them evaluate their research on mobile devices, basically server-side control-plane stuff. The mgmt team gave me free reign and I decided to build it on Elixir.

It’s worked out pretty well, we’re planning to spin off the product into its own company, I have 4 reports now for that product, 3 of which are mostly doing Elixir full-time, 2 of which I onboarded onto the language, the other had prior Elixir experience. They are all ‘seasoned’ developers, at least in the age bracket you are, on average a bit older than that even (I’ll spare their - and my - blushes).

They all seem to enjoy working in Elixir . A few legitimate gripes about type-checking and the tooling is still a little short of what the more popular languages have, but I’d say for most of us, the facilities and stability of the ecosystem - and our experience of what it’s actually like building alternatives in other languages - we’re pretty happy with the trade-offs.

Not sure if any of this is of any help, but there are bunch of us oldies out here, having success with this platform and I’m sure you will too.

I was 36 when I discovered Elixir. I know a guy who was in his 50s.

Never too late to find the right thing for you.