Agreed. It's easy to have memory safety when you don't even support heap allocation. Now if OP had said "Java" or "C#" instead of "COBOL", they would've had a solid point. But the way Rust ensures memory safety without mandating GC while still allowing for complex allocation patterns can be said to be practically unfeasible for any of the usual "legacy" languages, with the notable exception of Ada.

Well, I said it was ironic that we went out of our way to make a newer more complicated to read language that was memory safe when we already had a language that was simpler and readable that was safe.

I didn't say I wanted to code in it, though. I'd prefer in no particular order Kotlin, Python, Go, C++, Rust, Perl, C#, Java, Zig, etc. Anything really over COBOL myself. I'm part of the problem.

But, if I was hard up for money and wasn't getting nibbles for jobs? I could see getting into COBOL because there is a lot of money in it and always work available.

My statement stands though, we need to do better when designing the syntax of our languages. Cobol is disliked, yet simple and readable. What does that say about our new languages. How hated are our "new" language remnants going to be when few of us are longer around to maintain them 50 - 75 years from now? And, how easy are they going to be to pick up?

Addendum: I guess it won't matter if the singularity comes and just writes it all for us, of course. Then it will all just be machine code and we won't need these "only human" translation layers any longer.

I don't think the use cases for Cobol (bank software) typically overlap with those for Rust (operating systems...etc).

It's like saying no gardener should be allowed near a garden that would choose a shovel over a pair of shears. Both have a place.