Fatal Exception blogger Neil McAllister offers his own take on the current state of COBOL when he writes, “If you can program in COBOL, the state of California might like to talk to you.” But when you get past all the politics and the $177 million the state projects it will spend to upgrade its old systems, there’s a technology twist in all this: new code is more expensive than old code. That’s right: Multicore processing, SOA, and Web 2.0 all contribute to rising software development costs, McAllister reports in California’s COBOL conundrum. “In other words, new code is more expensive than old code. The more you take advantage of today’s hot new technologies, the more likely you are to experience development delays and software defects.” Software Development