COBOL is in the same category. When invented, it was the absolute easiest programming language to learn and use, so of course it gained popularity.

It then turned out to be rather good at what it did, along with running on hardware that "never fails", so most places didn't even think about replacing it until sometime in the 90s.

Also keep in mind that the reason companies are migrating away from COBOL is not due to the language as much as due to young people not taking an interest in COBOL and Mainframes, making it hard to recruit new talent.

Even then, a migration away from a typical mainframe is a huge task. In most cases you're talking 50-60 years of "legacy" (still running, still working, still updated) code, and replacing a system that has evolved for half a century is not an easy undertaking, at least not if you plan on getting it 100% right the first time.

Having only fleeting professional experience with COBOL during a summer my view of it is that it is a mix of dataanalyst job and programming. Where the programming is horrible and the report making is ok though archaic. As long as you modify processes already available it is not so bad, but the developer experience was horrible.

With all that said I actually liked ideas in COBOL but it is an extremely niche language that does not serve you at all in the real world.

But yeah, if you're looking to code up a progressive web app or next blockbuster MMORPG, I wouldn't recommend COBOL.

It's all a matter of age and maturity. Nobody starting an airline, or financial company, or "hardcore data processing" today even bothers considering a mainframe or COBOL.

I wouldn't portray Cobol to be some sort of magic "hardcore" pixie dust for anything.

It is more like young people not wanting to:

- throw their careers out of the window by pigeonholing themselves into zombieware tech

- experience high levels of stress trying to debug code older than their parents, writing code that can't be unit tested and pushing said code to production

Isn't that just "move fast" these days?

The only language that comes even remotely close is Java, in terms of job guarantee.

I doubt it's more stressful. Debuggers absolutely do exist, as do modern desktop editors with step by step debugging, but you will have to learn at least a little bit about memory management, SQL, and other "nasty relics".

It appears to be a part of the skillset that is no longer taught. I've worked in the embedded industry for a decade, and we usually had little more than trace lines over a serial cable to debug our code, and yet we somehow made it work.

I've long since realized that being a skilled programmer has very little to do with what language(s) you code in, and more about your understanding of the problem space. Yes, you can be a star in Advent of Code if you know every nook and cranny of your chosen (esoteric) programming language, but often people that understands the business side of things will fare much better.

And yes, I've also been young once, and I've programmed in just about every programming language that has been "modern" or "old" in the past 30-40 years (I've even written software in APL), and I've been good at it. I also absolutely despised the thought of programming in COBOL, but in the end, programming is about telling the computer what to do, and the what is the important part, not the how.

This seems like an application area in desperate need of applied A.I.: Analyze a codebase and replicate it (for the first few iterations at least) in the new target language.

Isn't there research on this ? Or am I full of balonie ?

And let's be honest, a lot of folks in IT aren't exactly top performers and don't seem to care all that much. It's really the developers you find on forums like this who are genuinely passionate. You're not likely to bump into the people actually buying those big Oracle or IBM systems around here though :)