Sure, we've invested so much money and 10 hard years learning this stuff that we just have to use it right?

You're entitled to your opinion of course, strange COBOL analogy notwithstanding, but if you look at the rise of cloud environments more widely you will see that there is a shift happening towards simpler storage models (BigTables, Azure Tables etc.) because they scale more easily and don't require DB Ninjutsus to get the best out of them.

I'm sure there will still be a place for you Old-Skool data guys but that place will be within the cloud, maintaining the platform, not developing software.

And I for one will be glad. 🙂