Many of these older languages do things that younger programmers are taught not to do. If you've only ever programmed in OOP/Java, Ruby or .Net, I'm not sure yo

Many of these older languages do things that younger programmers are taught not to do. If you've only ever programmed in OOP/Java, Ruby or .Net, I'm not sure you'll "learn as you go" as you'll have to go against much of what you learned in college or at your startup. If you are able to do that (think outside of what you've been taught), then you'll be fine, if not, you'll fail and complain and suggest that it be re-written in Ruby, etc. Edit: And if they do re-write it, they'll use C++ code written like C code. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but just know that they "think different" and you have to adapt to their way, not them to yours.