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by serallak 928 days ago
I don't think it'd take two years to learn cobol, it should be less than that.

But it will take much more than that to learn the gnarly codebase in use in those shops...

And that is a skill that is certainly not transferable.
1 comments
exhilaration 928 days ago
I don't think it'd take two years to learn cobol, it should be less than that.

There's a comment in this thread from a former consultant that completed a 4 week COBOL bootcamp before being sent to a client to write code!

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wombatpm 928 days ago
It’s not the language, it’s the business rules and history.

Why is this input file loaded and rechecked 3 times? Because 30 years ago a file load failed, breaking end of quarter reports. This was the fix: if we can read that file three times and it doesn’t change then we know it’s good

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