I'm 49, still working, still learning new stuff all the time. You can't assume that someday you'll stop learning and start being productive. There is always something new to learn. Always. The next project is going to have new concepts that you haven't seen before. I still charge for it all. If the project requires a certain new technology, I'm not hiring someone new just for that project. I'll learn the new concepts, and then do the project.
The technology world is so rich with concepts now that you could spend your whole lifetime learning and never accomplishing anything. So why should I pay to learn something that only this project requires? Every project will have something new, therefore I can never make money? No, the cost of learning is built into every project. That's the way it is. Software development is not plumbing or carpentry. It's different, and learning is part of the cost of doing any project no matter how old or experienced the engineers are.
i applaud your nerve. the audacity of billing. i wish i felt more confident about that. that's great.
i feel that it's easier to bill for something like time spent learning the customer's unique (-ly confusing) data model, or for figuring out the product's requirements (since the company has little to no documentation of that).
OTOH, i feel less confident charging for time i spend learning about the vagaries and unexpected behavior of the android platform since "i'm supposed to know that" (and also since those problems are the android platform's responsibility)
i find the balance hard to strike sometimes. i compromise a lot.
Right now the industries are begging for programmers.
Companies from the US literally hire me to work remotely from my bedroom in France because they can't find somebody with the skill they need at the price they can pay. All of them are either taken or too expensive.
The situation is unlikely to change: the need for software is constantly increasing, but the rate we produce new developers and the quality of them is not following as quickly.
So get audacious. You are on the best side of the fence right now.
The technology world is so rich with concepts now that you could spend your whole lifetime learning and never accomplishing anything. So why should I pay to learn something that only this project requires? Every project will have something new, therefore I can never make money? No, the cost of learning is built into every project. That's the way it is. Software development is not plumbing or carpentry. It's different, and learning is part of the cost of doing any project no matter how old or experienced the engineers are.