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A comment on Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed. Parent comment

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by silisili on Monday October 11, 2021 @12:34AM (#28824699)
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.

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by smsm42 on Monday October 11, 2021 @12:45AM (#28824748)
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.
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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by bluedino on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:12AM (#28827939)
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.

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by rad_gruchalski on Monday October 11, 2021 @07:45PM (#28834370)
> 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!

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by treespace88 on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:49AM (#28828265)
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.

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by drstewart on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:16AM (#28824930)
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.

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by silisili on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:36AM (#28825055)
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.
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