Career Resboot at Age 55?

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I'm 55 years old and high functioning autism. From 1984 to 1991, I was a mainframe computer programmer/analyst using Cobol, JCL, IMS, DB2, et al. I have been out of this field for 25 years due to being a full time stay at home parent. I now want to brush up on my computer skills and get a database developer certification. Do you think it is too late to do this, being as how I will be 56 by the time I go back to get a job? Will I even be able to get a job at my age, being as how I will be older than most other job applicants, and the economy sucks?

You may want to see if you can get jobs using your old qualifications where employers have to overlook age to find anyone that has actual experience--there are lots of systems out there still using Cobol. The idea is to be able to replace older irreplaceable workers that have just retired--perhaps keeping some older system going yet another decade. That way, when the a new system has to be implemented, the present management will have retired and it will be some other managers' problem.

You should have basic office computer skills--cutting and pasting text into emails and such--and knowing basic security protocols for using computers in this age of hackers trying to ransom company files for money.

I'm just thinking out loud, but I'd bet if you still can do COBOL (or similar) and then pick up one or two current languages, you might fit into a very special niche of people who can convert legacy systems to contemporary standards. Such people might be in high demand. (Something to research.) And no, I certainly don't think you're too old to do this. There might be prejudice in face-to-face hiring, but certainly for any work that can be done remotely they would never know. On the Internet, no one knows you're 55 (or a dog).

I know NT people in a variety of fields who also struggle with this. Darmok's idea of positioning yourself to be able to convert old systems to new is a good one, but face-to-face interviews are still common and older-looking folk get passed over regardless of qualifications (as do the overweight, both getting written off as 'not energetic enough to keep up.') Whether or not you get additional certification(s) first, when it comes time to ready yourself for interviews it might be worthwhile to analyze your physical appearance - including your interview wardrobe - and consider whether you're willing to make any changes to look like 'the ideal candidate' you hopefully already are.

This is just my experience: I worked for some years as a tech writer in Silicon Valley and, later, in Utah, about 28 years ago. At the time, I learned all kinds of tech ideas (some very, very, specialized). Now, I have only enough knowledge to be a digital danger to myself; hehe. Part of this is because I believe that most code today is "designed by committee" or worse, "designed by other apps." While I have zero tech knowledge beyond what I needed to know to ably describe to users what they needed to know to drive the apps and hardware, my own experiences as a user lately make me cringe. It is largely fluffy code with an abundance of conflicts and errors waiting to happen (look at the Windows 10 update 1607). So, my conclusion is that I could never return to my career having forgotten more than most of today's codeheads seem to know -- a kind of perfect storm.

Having written that, I believe that it might be very possible for a veteran codehead to re-enter the tech industry with the promise to bring "years of tech and management skills from a time when tech was king." I have to believe that many tech businesses need somebody with that kind of knowledge.

Good luck.