Have they lost their building muscles, or are they just not building what you want how you think they should? At 55, I'm not as prolific as I used to be, but it's not because my skills have atrophied. It's partly because I tend to work on the bits everyone else is avoiding (often because they're difficult), partly because I try to do things right instead of hacking and slashing, partly because I find it hard to concentrate on doing things within the absolutely insane structures and idioms my younger coworkers have created.
Example: the almost universally used service infra where I work is a nightmare of excessive context switches and tuning to avoid starvation/deadlocks. Why? Because the kidz who developed it apparently didn't read enough to know that the basic paradigm it's based on is known to have such problems. The people around me think this is normal or inevitable, and just live with it, but even the person who did most to popularize these ideas recanted a decade ago. Too bad; we're just stuck with it, because it's the young folk who refuse to learn.
Your older coworkers probably haven't lost their "building muscles" and aren't reluctant to learning anything. They're reluctant to repeat or build on past mistakes. Overall, your comment seems like a good example of how older programmers are often misrepresented by those who don't share their experience. Let people represent themselves.
Example: the almost universally used service infra where I work is a nightmare of excessive context switches and tuning to avoid starvation/deadlocks. Why? Because the kidz who developed it apparently didn't read enough to know that the basic paradigm it's based on is known to have such problems. The people around me think this is normal or inevitable, and just live with it, but even the person who did most to popularize these ideas recanted a decade ago. Too bad; we're just stuck with it, because it's the young folk who refuse to learn.
Your older coworkers probably haven't lost their "building muscles" and aren't reluctant to learning anything. They're reluctant to repeat or build on past mistakes. Overall, your comment seems like a good example of how older programmers are often misrepresented by those who don't share their experience. Let people represent themselves.