[petercooper]

This isn't a counterargument as such, but you could apply similar logic to, say, banks and COBOL? I'm not in banking, but I imagine there are many good reasons to keep writing and maintaining COBOL, and these companies may have similar stories to tell about Ruby.

[pdimitar]

COBOL and many legacy systems have the nasty problem of everything being inter-connected: a textbook example of spaghetti code.

So in such systems, in order to even begin properly, you have to rewrite a sizeable chunk of the legacy code before you could even showcase a first demo / MVP.

Needless to say, the relentless culture of our modern times makes the businessmen never approve such projects.

[pizza234]

COBOL is a bit of a different beast :)

Very interest article, and related discussion, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221877.