I cut my teeth on financial COBOL back in the 90s and from my perspective the article isn't "lying", it's "completely divorced from reality". For the past thre

I cut my teeth on financial COBOL back in the 90s and from my perspective the article isn't "lying", it's "completely divorced from reality". For the past three decades it's been cheaper to encapsulate these systems and extend functionality by working in a modern language, and so that's what everyone's been doing. The prime issue (imho) is that it's less expensive and better for everyone if you rewrite these systems from scratch, but that cost is still so prohibitive that it might not make sense to keep operating the company. The second issue is hardware availability, a bizarre omission on the author's part. Your org lifespan might entirely, predictably depend on how many spares a forward-thinking dev bought in the 70's. The third issue is fintech. Someone else has already raised the cash needed to rewrite from scratch, and what you can do about it is sell them your client list. From a personal perspective COBOL is such a pain in the ass to work with that I'd need a ruinous salary to be enthusiastic about the job.