"any development experience from the 70s is at best meaningless and at worst detrimental"
"but the experience is meaningless"
Taking that approach, almost all experiences are 'meaningless' in the context of "i need someone to do these exact steps XYZ". But, as someone who was programming (hobby) in the 80s, I think there's some value here (and of course I don't think it's purely defensive and me-focused, but maybe it is).
You mentioned elsewhere "Drop the me of 30 years ago into the technology environment of today and I would be completely lost." Perhaps, but many people today are completely lost too. The "you" of 30 years ago had characteristics - curiosity, problem-solving, etc - that informed the experiences. Over time, perseverance was demonstrated with an accumulation of related experiences.
The specific experiences of programming in 1985 are not relevant to most problems of today, but a demonstrated history of successful logical thinking applied to a variety of computers/data/projects is not irrelevant nor meaningless.
EDIT: Rereading the second half of your post, I agree with you on the second half - drop hobbies, drop older tech references, etc - lose the extraneous stuff in general from general purpose resumes. Lose date references in general, I think (graduation dates, etc). Focus on things that are relevant to modern work practices/tools.
Perhaps you were meaning all that older stuff is meaningless in terms of a resume? I agree. It's the sort of stuff that might come out in an interview or two, depending on who you're talking with. Telling a 24 year old about doing C64 assembly programming does no good, and wastes time - that is essentially meaningless in terms of general tech job hunting. There are rooms for these nuggets, but you need to be selective.
The "you" of 30 years ago had characteristics - curiosity, problem-solving, etc - that informed the experiences.
As I said in that other comment, I see the basis of your argument. Having learned many languages over a 30 year time frame shows you probably are a hard worker that keeps their skills up to date.
You know what shows that with almost no doubt though? When you submit a resume to an employer in 2014 and you show a mastery of commonly used 2014 technologies. That literally is the only thing that matters to most employers.
So yeah, if one (not speaking of OP) does not have experience with modern languages or frameworks for whatever reason, you can make an argument that your previous experience might hint that you possess desirable traits. But unless you're looking for maintenance job on some old Cobol or C code, there's nothing betting than keeping your skills up to date continuously which proves you have those desirable traits.
Again, in principle I don't disagree with your point. The danger is in the reverse - someone hired because they know tech 2013X, but don't really know how to do anything else with it, nor how to problem solve. At the same time, someone with 20 years of experience who perhaps just finished up working with tech from 2010, because that's what that client/company was using, and gets ignored as "not modern".
But your bigger point - yes - have modern skills, and being able to show those with relatively current tech is the best way to go. Personally, I'd take someone who is older but within a few years of current tech vs less experiences with only modern tech. 8 years of Java and Ruby with experience up to Rails 3 vs 1 year of Rails 4 only? Should be a no brainer for most situations, unless the job is "writing Rails 4 tutorials" ;)
There's a huge spectrum of middle ground there, and good companies/recruiters should be able to divine that. ("should" being the operative word).
There's a big difference between listing Rails (a new technology -even rails 1 is a new technology- that is currently widely used), and listing COBOL. Don't even bother listing cobol/perl/whatever unless the company you are using uses those technologies.
I think it's probably best to split the job search into two bits.
a) The bit where some recruiter is looking through CV's.
b) The bit when you talk to the gaffer.
I agree with the 'drop everything off a cv' line. Most recruiters have at best a basic understanding of IT buzzwords and next to no IQ. Keep it simple, sell yourself as the answer to the problem and save the interesting chat about what you did in 1987 for more important people.
I think it's more about being able to distinguish skills from products. Products become obsolete, skills do not.
You have dBase II experience? Not relevant.
You have experience building database-backed interactive applications in resource-constrained environments? Could be quite relevant, with the rise of mobile.
So: go through the list of products and cull the old ones, but as you do so, ask yourself what you learned from using each.
"but the experience is meaningless"
Taking that approach, almost all experiences are 'meaningless' in the context of "i need someone to do these exact steps XYZ". But, as someone who was programming (hobby) in the 80s, I think there's some value here (and of course I don't think it's purely defensive and me-focused, but maybe it is).
You mentioned elsewhere "Drop the me of 30 years ago into the technology environment of today and I would be completely lost." Perhaps, but many people today are completely lost too. The "you" of 30 years ago had characteristics - curiosity, problem-solving, etc - that informed the experiences. Over time, perseverance was demonstrated with an accumulation of related experiences.
The specific experiences of programming in 1985 are not relevant to most problems of today, but a demonstrated history of successful logical thinking applied to a variety of computers/data/projects is not irrelevant nor meaningless.
EDIT: Rereading the second half of your post, I agree with you on the second half - drop hobbies, drop older tech references, etc - lose the extraneous stuff in general from general purpose resumes. Lose date references in general, I think (graduation dates, etc). Focus on things that are relevant to modern work practices/tools.
Perhaps you were meaning all that older stuff is meaningless in terms of a resume? I agree. It's the sort of stuff that might come out in an interview or two, depending on who you're talking with. Telling a 24 year old about doing C64 assembly programming does no good, and wastes time - that is essentially meaningless in terms of general tech job hunting. There are rooms for these nuggets, but you need to be selective.
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