[artine]

My impression from the article was that the barrier to entry for new hires was less the language and more the domain-specific knowledge of the industry and the institution.

Salient quote from the article: "the time before a new employee can stand on their own feet is 2–3 years"

[danieltillett]

Exactly. It is not like COBOL is that hard to learn, what is hard to learn is how these old systems work and what all the code is doing.