[scottwhudson]

Working in the Austin startup scene, I definitely get a sense that this is an issue amongst younger companies. However, I look at my father who's now with a massive merchant software company and there's not a single person in his division under the age of 40 (a lot of these guys are maintaining legacy mainframes, etc.)

About a year ago, the company realized that they're SOL with a n aging employee base and no one coming in to replace them once they retire. He's always argued that larger companies will come calling once the boomers are out, but I shutter at the thought of having to learn COBOL.

[brianwawok]

I had to learn a tiny tiny bit of COBOL to help transition some mainframe code from COBOL -> Java. If you are just reading it to gut the program, not a huge deal. You can play with the inputs and outputs and verify your work.

Now having to learn COBOL to maintain it? That seems not fun. A simple change can take days...