One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
Money and Security are two very powerful basic human needs. A lot of people would want lots of money and guarantee to have lifetime job employment. A large part of those people don't really care how they earn this money and lifetime employment guarantee, as long as they have it. How does Cobol ranks for those people? Security: It's well known, to the point of the joke, that Cobol guarantee you a lifetime job since the banking and insurance industries has tons of it. Those industries are betting on blockchain right now to migrate. Since BlockChain is a bad technology, it's likely that most of those efforts will fail. Some banks will migrate to better solutions. But some will find out that actually this Cobol thing works great. The average JavaScript hipster on the other hand is likely to need to learn a new Framework just next month. Money: That's an easy one. A well connected Cobol consultant makes way more money than the average San Francisco hipster programmer.
Time flies while you're having fun, but then one day your bio says something about being a 30+ year veteran in software engineering. Still, I've not seen it all, let alone done it all (yet).
COBOL
Nobody should ever learn Cobol?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
The devil advocate has found this scenario.
Money and Security are two very powerful basic human needs.
A lot of people would want lots of money and guarantee to have lifetime job employment. A large part of those people don't really care how they earn this money and lifetime employment guarantee, as long as they have it.
How does Cobol ranks for those people?
Security: It's well known, to the point of the joke, that Cobol guarantee you a lifetime job since the banking and insurance industries has tons of it. Those industries are betting on blockchain right now to migrate. Since BlockChain is a bad technology, it's likely that most of those efforts will fail. Some banks will migrate to better solutions. But some will find out that actually this Cobol thing works great. The average JavaScript hipster on the other hand is likely to need to learn a new Framework just next month.
Money: That's an easy one. A well connected Cobol consultant makes way more money than the average San Francisco hipster programmer.
No, it's not.
So, you're saying Cobol is perfect for people with a predominantly self-centered world view. That is quite the devil's argument!
Professionalism ought to carry with it a set of ethics or code of conduct.