False -- COBOL is excellent for formatting data, handling non-relational databases (and yes, non-relational hierarchical dbs are faster if you have a fixed idea what you are doing
Java is nice enough for toys, but for real power a compiled language is better -- C preferably
COBOL programmers are worth a lot, LOT more than Java or anyone else..
Mainframes handle most of the world's business information processing -- it is highly stable with clear garbage cllection unlike Java or thers. Fortran and cbol do not crash randmly or have data leaks
Nothing, abslutely nothing can beat Cobol fr batch processing. Couple it with a JCL and you've got the best way t crunch numbers and data over and over again, reliably.
Finally -- cobol can be read and understod quite easily, unlike other languages
I left COBOL for Foxpro, then C#.NET, a long time ago.
And you tell me I could make much more?
For me, a Cobol programmer is hard to find and they are extremely expensive. And after only tiny bug fix I have no more use for them. You cannot build a web application or a mobile iphone/android app in Cobol. Trying to interface a new system with a legacy system is a cost, scope and time nightmare. No new application will ever be written in Cobol. Whatever could be written in Cobol has long been written. The only Cobol programmers you have today are servicing and fixing existing legacy systems not building anything new. Personally if I could, I would any day scrap all the legacy systems and build them new with any of the latest technologies.
Yeah good luck with that. I wish design requirement could be etched in stone. And good luck with refactoring data, char length, date formats.....making them talk to a java based system and trying to make them pass augments back and forth. And guess what most of the libraries handling the interfacing with the legacy systems are written in Java not Cobol. Why? Because nobody wants to tinker with the internal monolithic coding of COBOL. Thanks to the fact that no one created any documentation or generated APIs in COBOL (something you can do in Java with just one click).
COBOL you say? No thanks.