COBOL quote in the news

[Eric Smith]

Ray Arachelian wrote:
> Sounds like what they really needed were rewrites,

Contrary to anything you may have seen in the press, it is FAR less 
expensive to simply hire experienced COBOL programmers to maintain it 
than to rewrite it.  There are plenty of COBOL programmers out there; 
they definitely have NOT all retired.  But you're going to have to pay 
good salaries, which is what the state is trying to avoid.

 > or perhaps (automated) language translators; say from Cobol to Java.

If you do an automated translation, the result will just be COBOL that's 
written in Java.  You won't be able to find *anyone* that's good at 
maintaining that mess.

Eric