>>I have met several extremely proficient COBOL programmers who worked on the same system for decades and they don't know ANYTHING about Windows. Most of these programmers are happy with who they are and I never had problems with them.

>Good for them if they can make a living like that for now. But would you be confortable putting all your eggs in the same basket? I would not...

I would not either, but my point is that it is apersonal choice.

>>Another analogy, most lawyers, doctors, physisist, mathematicians, etc specialize in one field (it does not mean that don't hoot about anything else, just that they are much better in their field of expertise). I know several programming languages because I enjoy the challenge and learning is what I am about. You seem to enjoy learning too but this is not a precondition to be met for enterring the field.

>The days when all you needed to complete with success a project was a knowledge in one langage is near an end. More and more projects require an expertise on many langages and this trend will continue with the release of DotNET next year.

Maintenance work will always exist and not everything will be rewritten in the next few years. My current Client estimated it would take more than 300 person-years (and $30,000,000) to rewrite one of their systems. The system has a very limited number of screens (most of the jobs don;t even have a screen). What's the point of spending that much effort and money to replace a system that does what it is supposed to do. Note that they use screen scrapping technology to update the screens (they don't folow the Windows standards but the users are VERY happy) but hell will freeze over before they commit to replace the system.

Daniel