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.
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.