So what advantage does a 60-year-old .NET programmer have over a 27-year-old .NET programmer when they both have, at most, 5 years of experience doing .NET programming? Absolutely none.
Regardless of your age, you do not want to work for companies that believe this.
Definitely. Companies that think that the ".NET" part is more important than the "programming" part are going to be clueless about other things as well.
I have 10 yrs experience with Java, Ocaml and Ruby. This Jan 1 I started work on a contract with a company that uses Python. Having to learn Python as I went kinda slowed me down that first week.
whole lifetime of programming (assuming you start late in your early 20s) that gives you 35+ years of programming things that 5 year experience can't even scratch. Most of programming is not about programming language that easy part. My explanation to non techies is we all can read and write but how many of us are writers ?
Regardless of your age, you do not want to work for companies that believe this.