this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Listen. I escaped learning COBOL by being born in the 1980s. However, since I'm so fucking old now, I understand that you DO NOT FIRE THE WIZARD. The Wizard, the one who knows the incantations because they were there when the spells were written? Irreplaceable. Don't fuck with them. Pay them whatever they demand and do not ask questions.
If you want to depreciate the Wizard, you cannot use their spells. You must create your own, and you better do it in a language that people under 40 can comprehend. And they have to be as bulletproof as the Wizard's spells. Good luck getting an LLM to do that. Good luck getting a human to do that.
It's not hard to learn COBOL. However, the intricacies of the system that The Wizard maintains is another matter altogether.
I would argue that learning those intricaties is a part of learning the language. Otherwise you just know the syntax, somewhat like a LLM.
Warhammer 40K’s concept of Tech-priests is pretty close to the mark.