It’s just another computer language. I think a competent programmer could fake it after a couple of days of reading manuals, and just learn on the job after that. Maybe their timeline doesn’t allow for that, but it would be better, I think, than waiting around wishing for their ideal candidates.
It’s usually not the language, I agree somebody competent could pick it up...the real problem is understanding the whole system architecture and not breaking it.
No, it is not. It is ugly as sin. Anyone who would seek that out in this day and age would suck eggs.
COBOL is batch oriented. Serial reads, serial writes. Think “card readers” and “line printers”. Have you ever done anything in batch mode? Sure, some of that made it to using a database kind of thing. ISAM, a precursor of the database you know today. Online systems would be a bit further along than that, but more like the old CRT terminal.