The need for cobol in covid19

Question

Since the covid19 thing I read cobol developers are in demand. To help in my own little way to fight covid19 is it valuable to learn? Or do you guys think it's useless? What are your thoughts on the situation.

Answer 1

Little bit more info cobol is needed for the systems that run unemployment offices and banks etc... they are having trouble with upkeep because of the amount of people they are dealing with.

Answer 2

COBOL is ancient, even though you are right about the resurgence of demand towards it, but many opinions say it should have been gone decades ago. Maybe that is not directly the fault of the language, but the actual programs and architectures built with it.
If you really want to learn another language, I would pick one that could potentially replace COBOL. Because those organizations who still use it, are already having a hard time maintaining them. Most Cobol programmers have retired or died, or switched. The IT landscape is changing rapidly, new business requirements, processes, integrations and analytics are demanded all the time. And I think it would be better to build systems with the right tools.
I found a few articles could be worth reading:

https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/04/20/brush-up-your-cobol-why-is-a-60-year-old-language-suddenly-in-demand/

https://m.slashdot.org/story/325515

https://wiki.c2.com/?WhyWeHateCobol

Answer 3

I also heard that COBOL programmers are in demand because they need them to read the old COBOL code and convert them into modern languages.