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In what way is it terrible?

No you don't? What are you basing this claim off?

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I'm a COBOL developer. For old COBOL systems it's not just a case of it being expensive to "migrate away", it's extremely risky and for no significant benefit.

Businesses have essentially two options, modernize what they already have, or tear everything apart and start from scratch. COBOL programs don't "just work", they're good at what they need to do (business transactions). Therefore, there isn't a significant need to rewrite everything, especially when it's possible to modernize and reuse existing business logic contained within COBOL programs. For example, COBOL programs aren't tied to old hardware, you can run your COBOL applications on the cloud instead. This is much safer and cheaper than rewriting everything.

I would say I'm a very ideals-driven person as well. I had hoped to get a job with a company whose values aligned with my own upon graduating.

My experience was that it was really difficult getting my first job when I was being fussy with who I was sending my applications to. This is despite having both an undergraduate and postgraduate degree with the highest possible grades and also industry experience.

Eventually I gave in and started sending applications to all sorts of companies and took the first job I got offered. I'm still early in my career and I'm still working with this company.

Honestly I think for a first job it's just worth taking whatever comes your way if it will offer you valuable experience. Then you can always apply for other jobs whilst you're earning money and experience. That's my plan anyway.

Other than that, I would recommend checking out this website: https://80000hours.org/

I often think about the learning pyramid and I find it lines up with my personal experiences.

The experiences which have made me better at programming are when I'm teaching others or when I've been working on projects in my spare time (practicing).

For example whilst I was still at university I decided to make a Discord chatbot and it really helped me build on what I'd already been taught.

Other than that I like reading coding standards documents, like this.

I encounter something similar to this often.

There's a lot of cookie banners where "Accept All Cookies" is a single button but in order to reject cookies you have to press a "Manage Cookies" link which will have something similar to a "Reject All Cookies" button in it.

It's very annoying.

Yes this would make sense.

Quote from "What methods can we use to obtain consent?":

If you are asking for consent electronically, consent must be “not unnecessarily disruptive to the use of the service for which it is provided”. You need to ensure you adopt the most user-friendly method you can.

For a website, hiding rejection behind a link should class as "unnecessarily disruptive". If you can provide consent with the press of a single button then rejecting should also be the press of a single button.

I think you're referring to healthline: https://anon.healthline.com/

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Had a quick scan of the CTV article and I don't believe it links to the Mozilla article. It can be read here. Here's an archive link too.

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You're right that many COBOL jobs are those working with mission-critical software. However, these companies are not only looking for senior developers. They hire developers from a range of skill levels, including junior developers, for much the same reasons that any other company does.

Source: I am a junior COBOL developer! :)

Though I think if someone is wanting to make a wise career choice, they shouldn't only be learning only one programming language anyway...

This might be a nonesense suggestion, but have you tried out Lutris?

Disclaimer: I'm still a Linux noob myself (I made the switch as of 2 days ago). Lutris was a tool I saw often being mentioned when I was doing research on gaming on Linux, but I have not tried it out myself yet.

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What programming language you should pursue learning really depends on what you're trying to create, what problem you are trying to solve, what career you're pursuing, etc.

From your criteria of future proof and genuinely helpful, I would suggest COBOL! Though full disclaimer, if you look at my post history, well... clearly I have some bias here!

In all seriousness, COBOL certainly meets the criteria of being a future proof language. COBOL continually stands the test of time, whilst many other languages have been born, been used, and have died within the 64 years of COBOL's existence. That's because, ultimately, COBOL is great at what it does in the industries that it is used in. Furthermore, COBOL uses English-like syntax, meaning these decades old COBOL applications with varying levels of documentation are still able to be maintained since COBOL code is inherently self-documenting.

People have always joked about how COBOL is a "dead" or "dying" language. But this just... isn't true. In the 70s C/C++ was meant to kill COBOL. In the 80s it was Pascal. In the 90s... Java. And yet here we are in 2023 and COBOL is still alive and kicking no matter how much people want us to believe that it is not. There is every reason to believe that COBOL will continue to thrive long into the future.

Is COBOL a genuinely helpful language? I'm not sure if you're referring to it being helpful for yourself, or helpful to other people. But there is value in learning COBOL just to understand why and how the things we use in our everyday lives work, such as when we pay for something electronically. It would be very hard to go through even one day without using a COBOL application. Also, there is always a demand for programmers trained in COBOL to maintain and modernize existing systems.

I have a list of beginner COBOL resources over here if learning COBOL sounds interesting to you!

Here is some additional reading on why it is worthwhile learning COBOL:

• Micro Focus Blog: Top 10 Reasons to Learn COBOL
• The Overflow: Brush up your COBOL: Why is a 60 year old language suddenly in demand?
• CIO: Why it’s time to learn COBOL
• TechWell: Why You Should Learn COBOL
• ILoveLanguages: Why You Should Learn COBOL: The Versatile And Portable Language

I would recommend checking out this website: https://80000hours.org/

There are job postings on there, but there are also loads of other resources which may give you some inspiration.

I found this website after reading "What We Owe The Future" by William MacAskill. It's a good read!

That's okay! No harm done on my end. I was mostly signposting for other people who also aren't using adblocker just so they know what to expect if they wanna check out what you've shared :)

Also, thank you for sharing your opinion on Zenva. Genuinely I want people here to be able to make informed purchasing decisions so I don't mind being slapped on the wrist for sharing poor quality courses.