Counter-argument: Old apps, of the sort that are written in COBOL, are often ones that there are good reasons to replace anyway. The reason they tend to still

Counter-argument: Old apps, of the sort that are written in COBOL, are often ones that there are good reasons to replace anyway. The reason they tend to still exist, where they do still exist, is that businesses don't want to dedicate the budget to the replacement. But that also means that they don't want to dedicate a huge budget to maintenance, either. If COBOL actually gets rare enough that COBOL devs start getting high-end wages, it makes the "replace this thing" option look that much more appealing, which pretty much puts a ceiling on the demand for COBOL devs. If you are a purely mercenary developer, don't learn COBOL, because it's not where the money is.