Ooh, that is so true. I truly laugh out loud when I see some recruitment ads. I remember seeing an ad in early 2001 where 2 years .Net experience was mandatory!:laugh: I was working for Microsoft at that time and even I hadn't had any training on it!

I have a confession to make. I made a darn good living writing COBOL for ten years on IBM mainframes. I stopped using mainframes on a daily basis (except for a two month consulting engagement at a government department) over 12 years ago. There is a little known factoid that IBM sells more mainframe MIPS each year than in the preceding year. It seems to me that if customers still want it then why shouldn't IBM keep doing it? There is so much investment in mainframes and the supporting software that it would be financially irresponsible for a company to just throw it away. Then there are the arguments that mainframes are still the transaction processing kings, they are still the most reliable hardware and software platform and I/O throughput is still phenomenal. So it's not just COBOL, but everything else that goes with it you would have to first bring up to spec. Many high end UNIX platforms are getting pretty close to mainframes but the Windows Server platform has years to go. Probably (long) after I have retired!

You might also consider Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in C++" which is also available as a free download so you can try for yourself before purchasing. Here's a link to the top level web page: http://www.mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html

I wasn't aware that Starship Troopers had a plot :-)