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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

I suppose it's again that time of the year when there's a flood of articles trying to convince people that COBOL is worth learning, that it's been updated or that it pays really well, and that there are lots of hidden opportunities for you to make big money working with COBOL!

Those of us who actually worked with COBOL aren't fooled though. It bears repeating: COBOL is a horrible language and it's often used in legacy banking systems. Learn it at your own peril, especially when there are way more interesting languages and jobs out there.

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So much this, I work in a city with literally thousands of former cobol developers who's jobs were offshored over the past two decades. Check online jobs boards, there is very very little demand for this skill, shortage is myth.

>"... I work in a city with literally thousands of former cobol developers who's jobs were offshored over the past two decades."

I was intrigued by this. Can you say what city and why there are so many Cobol developers there?

Any city with telecom, airline headquarters, and financial services. This one has all three. Could be Chicago, and others.

Interesting I always associate COBOL with banking I didn't know it was as equally entrenched in airlines and telecom as well.

Keep in mind that everyone working in COBOL trying to squeeze costs.

It's a dead ecosystem.

This.

On a different language, but same mindset.

System is many years outdated and no one understands it.

Get a ticket. “Fix all the problems”

Me “Umm okay. Hire 20 people and give us 3 years.”

Them: you have a week by yourself.

14 months later their standpoint is it’s always one more week left.

I can’t tell if they even see the absurdity anymore.

Do they have a critical dependency on it?

If it doesn’t work they go out of business.

It also doesn't seem to pay that well. I would expect too earn 2-4 times as much as a Java dev but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I've noticed that people only speak highly of COBOL, as a technology, when Grace Murray Hopper's name occurs nearby.

That's all that I need to know about COBOL.

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