> Mainframe systems are facing a critical shortage of developer workforce as the current generation of COBOL developers retires. Furthermore, due to the limited availability of public COBOL resources, entry-level developers, who assume the mantle of legacy COBOL systems maintainers, face significant difficulties during routine maintenance tasks, such as code comprehension and defect location.
Old stuff is hard to maintain? Who would have thought!
This myth of a Cobol developer shortage really has a lot of legs. I personally know of hundreds of former Cobol developers who moved on after their jobs were offshored over the past 12 years. If Cobol paid current salaries, a lot of former Cobol developers would be back. But companies don't pay, and developers stay away.
I can't say about the ones you know, but I can guess that many Cobol programmers have simply forgotten most of what they knew, and would struggle to even write a Hello World on current hardware & software.
Old stuff is hard to maintain? Who would have thought!
This myth of a Cobol developer shortage really has a lot of legs. I personally know of hundreds of former Cobol developers who moved on after their jobs were offshored over the past 12 years. If Cobol paid current salaries, a lot of former Cobol developers would be back. But companies don't pay, and developers stay away.