COBOL is still in demand. It’s the best language for large computers because you can teach anyone to use it
When I was learning programming languages, I heard this remark.
In Assembler you tell the machine what to do.
In Fortran you ask it what to do.
In Cobol, you get on your knees and beg it.
I took COBOL in college. I enjoyed using it. I think it is a great first introduction to programming.
Well we only have one small system still in Cobol, but now everything is so fragmented, that most programmers only know the skills necessary for what they work on and can’t easily be pulled to work on something else. That was the beauty of an all Cobol world. Anyone could at least read and change any Cobol program, now you’ve got to have access to whatever interface in being used to even get to the programs. It is asinine. I loved programming Cobol, but left it behind and now do remote laptop support and some PowerBuilder and some VBA and several other things. Whatever, after 30 years, it is nice to always have something new and different facing you. Throw away the old and embrace the new.
Heck, I can thank my COBOL and MVS/JCL skills for surviving the last purge where I work. Even though I'd not used them much in the past 20 years, the fact that I could and WOULD program in COBOL and even a little BAL was the tipping point between me and another guy in my department.