One of the most cheerful people I met was a guy on the commuter train about ten years ago poring over a greenbar fanfold[1] listing of COBOL code used in a gas station point-of-sale backend. I asked him about it, and he enthusiastically told me about what he was working on and how a problem had developed over night that he was going in to work on. It made me realize that software development doesn&#x27;t have to be bleeding-edge to be interesting. Indeed, I thought the stability of an established COBOL ecosystem might be refreshing.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Continuous_stationery" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Continuous_stationery</a>