[wvenable]

I did a co-op semester at a large company doing work on mainframes with COBOL in the late 90s. They had brought some of us in along with some other new hires. The other hires were slightly older and come from other careers. For example, one guy wanted to get out construction and into technology and that's why he was there. The company did extensive in house training because none of this stuff is taught anywhere.

It's like an alien world where some of the ideas are similar but also everything is completely different. Linux/Mac/Windows are all different but they are not different like working with mainframes is different. So if you started without any PC background, it really doesn't matter.

Personally, it wasn't for me. The whole thing was basically frustrating. The technology was frustrating. The glacial pace of development was frustrating. One program I worked on was literally older than I was. The code quality was very high (given the technology) but that was accomplished by sheer effort rather than having smart tools.