Programmers and fashion models

I have always had the impression those two groups had something in common - the older you get, the harder it is for you to find a job, unless you have gone into management.
Of course I hope to be proven wrong, but it seems I'm not the only one with this feeling.

First I ran into Benoit Lavigne's post:
As I get older, I’m starting to look around and wonder: Is programming a young man’s game?

Which led me to Larry O'Brien post:
I have no doubt that it will be harder and harder for me to get work as a developer, no matter how current my coding skills stay. If I'm on the phone with a potential client and they ask about my experiences, I don't say "Professional programmer for 27 years," because I think that could very well trigger ageism; I say "I sold my first program when I was 16."

You can also read the comments to Douglas Reilly's posts from 2003 and 2005 (read the comments), hinting statistics showing the average age for software developers is 35, while for web developers it's 29.