I avoid linking programs like the plague, and I won’t knowingly link to anyone who has link pages.
I do think though that the newer the site, the more important the linking, and I ride on my age (in more than one ways, hehe!).
Just be choosy and careful, if you link to sites google does not like or sites that google will toss eventually, you suffer.
Better safe than sorry.
Grow the number of links slowly and keep checking. Quality is very important, it doesn’t mean page rank, it means well designed websites with good internal navigation and text and without any dirty tricks.