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.