Hacker News Reader

Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

This COBOL shortage myth has been around since I was a kid. It wasn't true then, and isn't now.

The entire problem is that they don't pay well for what is supposedly a rare resource. And nobody wants to learn a dead language for peanuts.

Offer 500k/yr, and me and about 100 million other people will be learning COBOL starting tomorrow.

View on HN

Right. COBOL is not some mythical ancient knowledge that can't be learned today. I'm pretty sure anyone who can learn Haskell can learn COBOL too, it's just a question of making them want to.

500? Try 250. Heck, 150 if we can work from home

The problem is now you have a bunch of D-level cobol coders without any experience, domain knowledge, etc

Which is where we are with most Java dev shops.

> The problem is now you have a bunch of D-level cobol coders without any experience, domain knowledge, etc

Right? So don’t wait too long because all of those who can pass this knowledge will be gone!

Also there are a ton of working programers that have some experience in cobol from school.

But everyone knows it’s a dead end. So yeah they need to pay very well to get the fixed they need.

Sounds like it isn't a myth - you yourself admit there aren't people who know it, just that would OFFER to learn it given the appropriate compensation.

By that logic, there isn't a shortage of anything if you have enough money.

The 'myth' since the early 90s is that you should definitely study COBOL because you'll be set for life because of the big shortage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com