So isn't the real problem that we have 800 billion lines of legacy code that needs to be understood and maintained; it just happens to be written in COBOL?
No.
800 billion lines of COBOL = 1 million lines of BASIC
A gross exaggeration, of course, but after 7 years of COBOL, I discovered BASIC and instantly became 10X of my former self.
I would never go back. I get enough overhead from my bosses. I don't need it from the tech too.