IT World: COBOL, like Star Trek, needs a new generation

[Recursion]

http://www.itworld.com/career/362379/cobol-star-trek-needs-new-generation

I was discussing the current and future state with Ed Airey, a Product Marketing Director with Micro Focus. Because of the nature of his job, he has his finger on the pulse of everything COBOL.

We discussed COBOL from the perspective of current and future career opportunities for those who now program in it, those who previously programmed in it, and those who have never programmed but would like to get a foothold within the IT profession.

For those currently programming in COBOL, there is every expectation that the large COBOL installations will continue to exist, particularly within government and financial services. These applications are too big and work too well to consider replacement. Certainly everyone should keep an eye on what’s going on with your particular application, but overall, the prognosis is good. Regarding expanding your knowledge and skill set, there are versions of Micro Focus COBOL running on windows, UNIX, and Linux. I’m not suggesting that entirely new applications on these platforms are being written in COBOL, but instead COBOL shops are using it to create off-host interfaces for existing applications. They are trying to move these applications as-written to other platforms. The advantage is that this provides the opportunity to work on and learn these other operating systems as a way to expand your marketability.

For those who have previously programmed in COBOL and have either left the profession or have moved to other technologies and are having trouble finding work, COBOL could be your answer for finding new and long-lasting employment.

I've done some COBOL before. I'm also a fan of Admiral Grace Hopper, who invented it. But it really is awful.

[hootinholler]

1. So does ForTran

What's the point?



Wait, people still use COBOL? Fuck, go figure. 1990 called and it wants its cross platform portability product back.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

2. FORTRAN has a firm base

It is used heavily by physicists and astronomers, among other things because it has a large mathematical function library which has had all the bugs beaten out years ago.

One comment on COBOL. About 30 years ago, I attended a talk given by Grace Hopper. I asked her, "When you developed COBOL, you intended it to be 'self-documenting', so that managers could read the code and understand what the program was doing. In your experience, how many managers have actually done this?" She laughed, and replied, "To the best of my knowledge, none."

[Kennah]

3. 23 years on COBOL, and I honestly think the poorly performing systems are getting worse.

[Thor_MN]

4. I once saw a colleague's function for significant figures in COBOL...

Filled about 5 pages of greenbar from a bandprinter. My version in VBA was about 5 lines of code.