Seriously? That sounds like the perfect job for Common Lisp (which appears more or less set in stone in 2016, albeit without the usual concomitant stagnation, given its malleability).

Plus, in fact, I get the distinct impression that your second sentence describes what COBOL actually did for companies decades ago, so the first one makes it sound like a contradiction.

> It is still my first choice when I want to choose a technology that will run for the next 20 years with minimal amount of code maintenance.

So it is basically the next COBOL ;-)

Is that a joke? I can easily imagine that having been said about COBOL at some point. It's an honest instance of Poe's law.

Actually, while unorthodox, I think one could read that sentence so that it refers to COBOL; as in "COBOL is still my first choice..." -- implying java will never be as good/stable... ;-) (No, I do not think that's what gp meant -- unless you're right and it's meant as irony).