>>It is fortunate there are those with a capacity to work year after year without ever learning anything new or getting excited about advances in their field.
>>If I were to project my own personality on those cobol people I'd have to assume that the most important "benefit" the employer would have to offer would be 24/7 suicide watch. ( cobol .. hell, Foxpro ! )
To build on the Keynote from SWFox: quality comes from minimizing variation and standardizing, not constantly reinventing and starting over. Most industries figured this out a lot quicker and even much newer industries are miles further down Quality Road. Meanwhile developers think they'll be allowed to behave like Picasso forever.
;-)
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
