and here you thought . . .

those Fortran course you took in the 70's would never be of any use....

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39803425

from what I understand, there are tons of private and public systems running Fortran and Cobol and nobody who knows how to do anything with them.

Wonder if they would consider a Fortran IV programmer from the sixty's?

I've had classes in and worked with assembler, Cobol, C, C++, Perl, Unix Script Code, and of course Basic .....but never fortran.

I found once a person knows one lanuage the 2nd is easier than the first to learn, and each after than a bit easier. I have to wonder if that is the case with folks who started out with object oriented code? Would they be able to pick up fortran fairly quickly.

I remember Y2K ...Cobol programmers were at a premium back then.

Fortran is structurally similar to Basic - a lot of syntax differences, tho.
for me the transition into objects was easier once I realized it's like PLC programming - just put everything in motion at once (g)

since so many things were not-yet-invented in the Fortran era, I can imagine teaching it to do server level email - for example - could be an interesting exercise. I lot of Basic/etc compilers will take in-line ASM - no clue about Fortran tho. that would be the ticket to connectivity issues.

I wrote some Fortran a long time ago.

So far as service level programs like Chowder mentioned, I used to write Assembler subroutines to do those functions for the COBOL dudes. Could never get into COBOL.