Do you know COBOL...opportunities await

[Blumlein 88]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html

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

I know COBOL. I hate COBOL. I've turned down jobs before that involve COBOL. That includes one working on unemployment claims running on Burroughs mainfames. Hard to believe it is still this prevalent. Always was concentrated in govt and banking.

 

[RayDunzl]

Those decks look nice, but what speakers are they using?

 

[amirm]

I know Cobol. I even taught it in college. I thought it was LONG dead post year 2K. I am amazed to read this:

Forget about the programming language. They are maintaining old mainframes running this code! Electricity cost alone should have justified moving to a modern solution.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I know Cobol. I even taught it in college. I thought it was LONG dead post year 2K. I am amazed to read this:

View attachment 57861

Forget about the programming language. They are maintaining old mainframes running this code! Electricity cost alone should have justified moving to a modern solution.

I think (hope) they've moved to various emulations or such. I do know as recently as 15 years ago some IBM, and Burroughs mainframes were being used to run the COBOL code by some local and state governments.

 

[RayDunzl]

If you had to convert 220 billion lines of code, wouldn't you just give up too?

 

[GaryS]

COBOL also processes everyone's social security checks. SSA is reported to have more than 4 petabytes of data.
Many federal agencies have HP or Dell make custom servers for the old languages they run.

 

[Blumlein 88]

If you had to convert 220 billion lines of code, wouldn't you just give up too?

Sounds like a good exercise for an AI machine.

 

[RayDunzl]

Sounds like a good exercise for an AI machine.

Gigolo Joe has that covered.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

I am sure they will find a lot of suckers for that temp job. Maybe the boomers will come out of retirement

 

[direstraitsfan98]

Look who's talking...

 

[RayDunzl]

So, I looked up COBOL in wikipedia.

Only one picture:

(the picture is probably from 1984)

 

[blueone]

I hated COBOL. Had to use it once. I miss Pascal though.

 

[Dimitri]

Code that has been in production for decades is worth more than gold.
That's why "rewritten from scratch" is either not entirely true, or not automatically a good thing.

 

[blueone]

So, I looked up COBOL in wikipedia.

Only one picture:

View attachment 57869

(the picture is probably from 1984)

Somewhere in a box I have one of Hopper’s nanoseconds she would hand out when she had speaking engagements.

 

[blueone]

COBOL also processes everyone's social security checks. SSA is reported to have more than 4 petabytes of data.
Many federal agencies have HP or Dell make custom servers for the old languages they run.

What would be custom about them? Now IBM z-series mainframes, those are COBOL machines you can still buy.

 

[Neddy]

It's about funding, 'If it ain't broke...', and interfaces.

Funding upgrade projects for systems that have been in production for decades and decades (reliably), long after the last developer retired, is screechingly expensive...and usually only badly broken systems get the attention (like court mandates from law suits).
Also, much of that code implements laws (administrative code, actually) that were written also in the 60s (HUD, for instance), and understanding the 'business logic' (such as it was) being implemented would drive the very best (future!) AI system insane.

And all these systems are very interconnected now (fishing license submissions pings the DOT database... x 1000s), so teasing out interface/data sharing between just the back ends involves months and months of testing/revisions AFTER re-coding. (Working with IRS and SSA could sometimes be a nightmare in itself, though they do have dozens of production quality test environments to play in.)

Fortunately, most of the MF and newer backends (IBM) have been upgraded over the years, and much of the interface work is between databases, run off complex batch files, which ARE maintained and current 'tech'.
One nice thing is that that old code runs like greased lightning on current hardware

Even in the late 90s I had trouble hiring Cobol programmers just to tease out vintage interface code (not to mention green screen scrubbers!).
The last company I worked for had a huge legacy of Fortran code based products....when they finally re-wrote it all in C++, they ceremonial placed all their fortran manuals/books on the entryway floors - doorstops in fact.

 

[mansr]

Now IBM z-series mainframes, those are COBOL machines you can still buy.

Right. The IBM Z hardware is still backwards compatible with the System/360 from 1964.

 

[Speedskater]

Somewhere in a box I have one of Hopper’s nanoseconds she would hand out when she had speaking engagements.

So do we. It was a 10 inch piece of small wire. (similar to a Cat3 wire).

 

[Soniclife]

They are maintaining old mainframes running this code!

All the really scary old hardware out there running production systems is unix or windows, and there a loads of them. Our company had a 25 year old server running windows, on a single box for a critical system, interestingly the day a new system went live at the start of a parallel run in prod, to see if the output from the new matched the old, the hardware died, it had been under a do not reboot order for years as the assumption was it would not survive a reboot.

 

[Soniclife]

And it will probably be 219 billion lines of code still running in a few years, when 80% of new today systems have been junked, if it ain't broke stay the hell away from it.