A majority of the applications development workforce in business today received its formal training and ensuing experience in mainframe computing and COBOL programming. Reskilling these individuals and persuading them to adopt innovations such as the C language represents a problem of considerable magnitude. We report the results of a study focused on experienced COBOL programmers and their transition to the C language. The study was conducted at a major financial services firm that is in the process of transforming its application development practice from a primarily mainframe, COBOL-based environment to a client-server, C-based environment. Two research questions motivated and guided the study: one, what are the perceptions of COBOL programmers about the C language, and two, how can training in the C language for COBOL programmers be targeted effectively? Results validate the general perception that COBOL programmers do not have very positive attitudes towards C. Results also point to the contingent effects of job insecurity and organizational tenure on training outcomes.