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Comment by wmat | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone else see a lucrative consulting opportunity in declining languages? I know a LOT of people still writing COBOL for a very good living, so who's to say in 10-15 years you won't be re-factoring enterprise Java in the same way.

Of course, you might want to just kill yourself first.

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A couple of years ago they actually started a one year COBOL education program here in Stockholm. Mostly backed by banks and insurance companies and from what I have heard most graduates have gotten relevant jobs. I doubt that the demand will be larger than the supply for much longer but it is quite fascinating nonetheless.

I would want to make sure that the declining languages had a good foothold in a lucrative industry.

COBOL programmers are increasingly valuable both because of their scarcity, and the fact that the small number of places that will need to continue maintenance on old legacy COBOL applications are mostly financial companies, who are using said COBOL applications for integral parts of their banking systems. It's a good market to cater to.

I don't necessarily have a crystal ball, but I'd bet that in 10-15 years Java will be a long way from a declining language; and I say that as someone who has never particularly liked it (the language itself, I think the JVM is actually a pretty badass virtual machine).

There's nothing wrong with writing COBOL. It isn't new and shiny, but is that all everyone looks for in a job?

I look for enjoyment, which involves a lot of things, but feeling that I'm doing something constructive is a big part of that, and when I spend days trying to write something that I could do in two minutes (or wouldn't be necessary at all) in a better language it gets very demoralizing.

I personally wouldn't plan a business model around technology laggards.

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