At some point, enough COBOL systems that support business functionality will migrate to newer solutions that do not use COBOL, and so the technology will start to obsolesce. That said, I predict it will be decades before the tipping point is reached. Folks like myself have no doubt slowed the rate by spending part of their IT careers integrating new technologies with COBOL systems, thereby minimizing the need to look elsewhere for business functionality. Though I loathe the language (can we be any *MORE* verbose!), one has to appreciate its ubiquity in business. To the trade rags that claim finding COBOL devs is getting tougher, ignore. I'm a C developer, and I picked up COBOL in a few days. Coupled with an experienced dev to help me navigate the build and test environment and understand the nuances of ENDEAVOR and SPF screens, (if I am remembering the naming right), I was off and running. And, only newbie devs get all defensive about programming languages. Those of us who are charged with moving business forward don't really care about the specific language in use. As long as their is some good rationale for the language choice, we fire up an editor and make things happen. Offshore firms also can provide lots of experienced COBOL dev at a reasonable price. Thus, if an when COBOL dies, it won't be for a lack of devs. I know OO COBOL was derided a bit today, and I am not sure I will defend it, but we seriously considered using it in 2006 to help with parsing and reading XML on the IBM zOS platform. I and the senior dev (a spitfire of a woman if I ever met one) decided that we could do all we needed in regular COBOL and getting all the mainframe devs to learn Enterprise COBOL wold be a lot of effort for little benefit (so, derision aside, I'd have used it, with no regrets) :-) I would go so far as to say that all good devs need to spend a bit of time supporting a business in a language like COBOL (I am sure there are other non COBOL options as well). I think it humbles a person to note that outside of the techie folks who spend hours on forums debating the merits of language constructs and such, there are other, far more important, considerations. Jim