[throwaway9475]

"I'm saddened by some of the comments here. It's true that COBOL is not safe. It's true you shouldn't be using it for large portions of your professional setting. It's true that these sort of libraries appear to be slapping a bandaid on a broken bone... All of those things are true, but you should learn COBOL. And you should learn it well.

I wonder where we will be in as little as 10, 20 years. When the COBOL dinosaurs die and universities stop teaching the basics of computers. Young programmers are being pushed away from the harsh realities of COBOL (not to mention anything below COBOL), who's going to be building the building blocks in the future? Who's is going to keep optimising modern languages like Smalltalk and Simula? That minority is only going to get smaller..."

It would sound ridiculous then and it sounds ridiculous now.