My Dad told me that I should learn COBOL because there are so many businesses running on COBOL software, yet not many people are maintaining it.
Though I always wanted to write a full-length video game in a language that was totally not intended for it, so I'll take that into consideration.
https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=8-kazxQBolM
https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=qaApxBPKOdw
@xianc78 Programming languages are not hard to learn. If a business needs someone who knows COBOL anyone they already have can learn it
@frost COBOL requires you to know some other language (JCL) in order to use it, assuming you are using it on IBM mainframes.
@xianc78 So? Same principle applies
@frost But it means more time for learning and less time for working.
@xianc78 If you had the choice of training an existing engineer for a few days vs. hiring an entirely new employee for one task, which would you choose?
@frost Depends. If it's temporary and I can find someone who can do it, I would just hire a temporary employee. Otherwise, I would train an existing engineer.
@frost The problem with COBOL is that a lot of people who wrote those old COBOL programs for businesses are either retired or dead, and the software is too crucial to be replaced with some modern cloud solution.
So it turns out that COBOL also requires you to know some other language known as JCL, as it is use to run the program (gives it input). But this seems to be assuming that you are actually using an IBM mainframe, but if you use something like GnuCOBOL, which compiles COBOL code into C, you can use it without JCL.