Is anyone programming in modern COBOL?

I used to maintain COBOL system written in late 90s at a previous job. There are still new features released, mostly because of legislation changes. Since the core codebase is from the 90s, we never used new COBOL features like OOP.

I am observing an increased demand for COBOL devs in Poland since developers in western countries are retiring. Companies will hire anyone willing to learn it for a good money. Maybe the new generation of COBOL developers will use some of the new stuff. In my opinion it would add unnecessary complexity. You need COBOL to implement a read/write API to the mainframe and handling more sophisticated stuff should be done with a modern language.

Last time I maintained COBOL programs was about 30 years ago. I would guess that new systems are not written in COBOL, so the demand is for maintaining legacy systems only and that in turn means industry specific knowledge and the patience to read through years and years of accumulated cruft code to make even the smallest changes.

http://cobolcowboys.com/

Didn’t you see the stories last year about states like NJ scrambling to hire COBOL contractors to maintain legacy software?

I don't think so. There's a lot of legacy software that still uses it. I'd wager most COBOL developers are over the age of 50. Old as dust.