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Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of people working helpdesk that know a bit of python who can learn COBOL if they knew a job offer was on the other end of the investment in learning the language. There are hoards of people learning python and powershell just so they can make more money, trust me when I say they (the people I see learning python for career prospects) have no sentimental attachment to the language.

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I don't think it's learning COBOL language that's the hard part. An inexperienced programmer who hasn't worked on financial systems is going to make security mistakes and write buggy code for awhile, both of which can be deadly to a bank. But it would be better to have that person rewrite the infrastructure than try to fix bugs. The problem with these ancient systems is trying to understand how bugs arise from subtle unintended interactions within millions of lines of code. I've been coding many languages for 25 years and I would consider it extremely daunting to try to tackle a bank bug knowing that one wrong assumption about one line of code could crash whole systems or cost millions of dollars.

Eh, someone's got to do it. Letting thing stagnate in perpetuity isn't cheap either. Move slowly and write tests.

Sure, but a veteran coder at least understands that tampering with something may affect some other subsystem you don't even know exists until it breaks... which you wouldn't even think to test. The idea of throwing the phone staff into COBOL instead of them learning Python just obfuscates the real problem which isn't that the language is uncool and dying but that the systems are like the rules of the NFL. They stopped making sense a long time ago to anyone who wasn't immersed and paying attention.

Ah, yeah, fully agree - I just saw your mention of having 25 years experience, which made me think basically "if not you, then who?"

I didn’t intend to imply that the problem could be solved by an army of people fresh out of boot camps with no senior level supervision.

I'm also realizing now that just because you "would consider it extremely daunting" does not necessarily mean that you don't think you could be a net positive contributor.

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