Every time I think I’ve seen it all on the internet, I come across stuff I never thought would exist in cyberspace.

One site that will probably be both entertaining and disheartening to you is ObsoleteSkills.com. The A-Z skill list is here, and no matter what your age is, you’re guaranteed to find something in there you know that’s now considered obsolete – or not. More on that in a moment.

Obviously, a very large part of the list is technology-related to some degree, however there are some non-tech skills listed where it’s obvious nobody uses the skill anymore; such an example is diagramming sentences. I had to do that crapola in elementary school, and even back then the teachers hated it and questioned why they had to teach it in the first place, so knowing it today is fairly worthless.

The best and worst example of an obsolete skill listed on the site is COBOL. That programming language is literally one of the oldest in existence and many believe it should be phased out, but that’s not happening any time soon, so COBOL is and isn’t obsolete at the same time. In other words, if you learn COBOL – even today – someone will want to hire you and probably pay you well for that skill.

Another that will give you a chuckle is Installing Linux From Floppy Disks. The reason for this type of skill being obsolete is painfully obvious and described right on that page: "…the kernel itself is no longer able to fit on a standard 1.44M floppy disk."

A few more you’ll get a kick out of is Routing Email By Hand, Patching An Object Deck, Hayes Command Set and I’m sure you’ll find many more.

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