[OskarS]

> I kind of respect that dedication, even with the mind-boggling frustration it comes with.

I dunno. I get the "respect the dedication" thing, but at some point this person is so afraid of change that they'd rather become a burden to others who have to deal with them rather than adapt to a changing world. At least for developers, part of the job description is to actually make an effort to learn and use new things.

I've worked with a number of these people, where whenever you introduce a concept that they haven't worked with for 25 years (e.g. a new VCS, a new/upgraded programming language, a new way of building, a new framework, even minor changes to code they wrote 15 years ago, really anything), they become incredibly resistant and intransigent, and they make change significantly harder than it needs to be.

People who are adaptable are forced to work with their ancient (and not always better) systems, because it's the path of least resistance. These kinds of people can be a real problem.

[badsectoracula]

But it makes sense to be resistant - you're trying to change something that they perceive to have worked for 25 years (or whatever). I bet that if they perceive that something to not work they'd accept that fix, but despite what some will say, more often than not if something isn't broken then it is a bad idea to try and fix it.

Part of gaining experience over the years is also gaining the experience that people often want to mess things that work (often with good intentions) and end up making things worse.

[unclesams-uncle]

The rest of us have mostly given up trying to troubleshoot his IT issues. For his part, he recognizes that he's on his own and will take the time to (try to) fix whatever issues he has.

Interestingly to you point, I've worked in banking for a number of years. The number of institutions that depend on legacy systems coded in otherwise extinct languages is concerning.

On the other hand, I've met some of the consultants banks use for IT maintenance. These guys (mostly in their 50s) can easily earn 40K a month (in Europe!) just for knowing COBOL and late 70s/early 80s era infrastructure.