In 2006, with 17, I worked on an internal bank system from the 70s mostly written in COBOL during my apprenticeship in Germany. We had the choice to go for java

In 2006, with 17, I worked on an internal bank system from the 70s mostly written in COBOL during my apprenticeship in Germany. We had the choice to go for java or COBOL at the time, but they begged us to go with COBOL and despite the dusty tools I liked the old school tooling more than everything I use now. There should really be a case for the "Duale Ausbildung" like we have in Germany in other countries. You are cycling between working for 6 weeks and 2 weeks of school over the duration of 3 years. I got my bachelor's degree afterwards and in retrospect the "Duale Ausbildung" was a way better form of learning and getting ready for the real world.