> I would have stuck with Oracle and Java or spent my career in Mainframes

And last I heard, there are tons of job openings asking for experts in Oracle and Java.

So how exactly would that have been terrible in terms of getting a steady income?

Well enough if you want a traditional 9-5 job (which is fine if it suits you) - pity Java is such a PITA to work with though and Oracle do charge a lot! for there product.

Trouble is if your company pivots and you have been doing Mainframe COBOL for 20 years - you might find transitioning to a new language hard.

I would happily go back to mainframes if given the opportunity. I miss the days of the "priesthood of the computer". I sorely miss linear languages like COBOL and PL. Yes, yes, I'm old fashioned, but man, were those the days. I miss programming on my 8-bit Commodore 64, praying I wouldn't run out of space on my floppy drive. Anyone remember Creative Computing magazine. I wrote every program in every issue for quite some time.

Now? I'm stuck working for a salary in a job that pays the bills. I live in Texas (I know, I know) where IT salaries are already low. Texas has that "right to work" mentality. My bosses are not real IT guys in the sense that they love IT. They're in it for the salary, whereas I'm in it because I still love it after a span of pushing bits over three decades. I would retire only if I won the lottery, but if I did that, I would likely buy a Z-Series mainframe and spend my days playing.

I get some of that "praying I [won't] run out of space" with programming microcontrollers for home projects.

> Trouble is if your company pivots and you have been doing Mainframe COBOL for 20 years - you might find transitioning to a new language hard.

Then you are not following the advice discussed.

Well there was a period when it looked like the mainstream was going to switch away from Java, but then Android was released. Java is heavily mainstream still. If you're optimizing, it's still a good bet to stick with. But be ready to jump off if Android switches languages away from Java which may pull enough mind share to make Java a 'niche'.

At least, that's my interpretation of the article's logic mixed with what appears mainstream to me. There's a lot of room for subjectivity, but it's difficult to argue that Java/Android isn't an extremely mainstream direction.