Holy crap: COBOL useful again!

[GBMaryland]

Who knew that learning that language in college for apparently no reason whatsoever would one day become useful:

Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims | CNN Business

On top of ventilators, face masks and health care workers, you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.

www.cnn.com

Friggin New Jersey

 

[ForgeValley]

I know, right? I had a class in it in college, and even then it was ancient. What's next, Fortran, Assembly?

 

[Soulezoo]

CA DMV still uses cobol on their mainframe for all their registration and licensing.

 

[GBMaryland]

I take assemble or machine language over cobol any day

 

[Redmanss]

Even Wyoming stopped using those old mainframes. And Jersey libs say we're backwards...

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Damn, if only they needed Ada!

Sirhr

 

[Maxwell]

35 years as COBOL DB2 CICS programmer. The stories I could tell. The sad part is that very few programmers understand how to program so that modifications done later are easy to do. There were times the program was so poor written that I scrapped it, started over. Trying to untangle a bowl of pasta would have been far easier.

Maxwell

 

[7.62willdo]

I know, right? I had a class in it in college, and even then it was ancient. What's next, Fortran, Assembly?

maybe BASIC..... BEGINNERS ALL PURPOSE INSTRUCTION CODE!

 

[BytorJr]

Bring back FORTRAN and none of that 90s BS with structures. F77 with DEC extensions. Though F90 was good just too late to party. Just no FORTRAN IV please - yuk!!

 

[PolarisBreach]

Cobol never stopped being useful. It's huge in the financial sector. The thing is there was generally enough programmers to go around because they got paid extremely well (consultants can easily make several hundred an hour working with a financial firm). But now those people are dying or retiring with nobody to take their place. No surprise - they've been talking about this problem for well over a decade; when I was in college in the mid-late 2000s (went for network security), I was told if I were to drop out and learn Cobol, I could retire by age 35. I didn't take that person seriously at the time. Given the criticality of the applications being run on Cobol, along with the cost of developing a new solution, a lot of organizations have dragged their feet. Now all the talent works for the people with the deepest pocketbooks, and in this case it ain't the government.

 

[Aries256]

Damn, if only they needed Ada!

Sirhr

 

[GBMaryland]

Bring back FORTRAN and none of that 90s BS with structures. F77 with DEC extensions. Though F90 was good just too late to party. Just no FORTRAN IV please - yuk!!

In 2006 I got stuck building a prototype cluster computer using ROCKS. What really suprised my is that FORTRAN was the primary language being used to submit jobs in.