I disagree with some of the conclusions the writer comes to. Smart, actual software engineers can learn COBOL very quickly, in a week to 2 weeks. It is far less complicated than modern software languages. Yes, I’m sure a system written 60 years ago and cobbled together with other programs many times per decade is highly complex, however, a highly capable and very intelligent software engineer could figure it out. It would take more than a few months, obviously, and you won’t get anywhere with pajeet and DEI coders. My last job in IT involved working with Medicare/Medicaid claims. We were sent claims and our system could only read the first 80 fields of a claim line. It took a few months to find someone at the state to root out an old manual and she read it to me over the phone. We then knew what the remaining 250+ fields were and how to read them. They’d forgotten how the data was used. Old COBOL system and from a single phone call I solved our problem. I then wrote up a guide and sent it to the state for their developers and other contractors to reference.