COVID-19 Response: New Jersey Urgently Needs COBOL Programmers
| New Jersey desperately needs COBOL Programmers. That’s what the State’s Governor, Phil Murphy, apparently meant today, when he said at a press conference that the State needed volunteers who with “Cobalt” computer skills to help fix 40-year-old-plus unemployment insurance systems that are currently overwhelmed as a result of COVID-19-related job losses. |
https://josephsteinberg.com/covid-19-response-new-jersey-urgently-needs-cobol-programmers-yes-you-read-that-correctly/
First I thought it's a April fool hoax but it's real.
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Maybe covid-19 is killing them off faster than it would say a Python programmer.
https://blog.hackerrank.com/the-inevitable-return-of-cobol/
So now, 60+ and either coining it in or retired.
https://blog.hackerrank.com/the-inevitable-return-of-cobol/
| In 2014, Micro Focus says that the average age of COBOL programmer is still about 55-years-old. |
So now, 60+ and either coining it in or retired.
nah, there were a wave of younger people that learned it in y2k and most businesses learned from that experience to get the younglings trained up if their systems are from the 1950s or whatever. They will find people, though their own foresight is very lacking since this is the second time on the cobol front.
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the language itself isn't too difficult. Unravelling the gibberish 'copybooks' for giant, antique database systems and trying to make sense of the system that the code operates on so that your changes are correct and have no unwanted side effects is where it gets interesting. You can fix something that is clearly wrong yet break some old process that relied upon the wrongness that you just fixed. That is the kind of stuff you run into when you dig into code from the 70s and 80s, which is what most of these projects are really asking you to do.
Pascal was written to be taught as a first language. I am not sure it counts :)
Pascal was written to be taught as a first language. I am not sure it counts :)
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Geez, talk about cheapness. "Please come fix our broken systems for free. We could have done it before it became a problem, but doing it like this we can exploit the situation and trick you into not accepting pay."
| Is COBOL difficult to learn - compared with C++ |
Back in the day I ported some compression and encryption code written in C to that environment. I wouldn't want to relive that experience.
| Is COBOL difficult to learn |
It's like trying to decipher a poorly written term paper. Is that difficult?
"Classic" 'Hello World' program in COBOL:
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https://riptutorial.com/cobol/example/19382/hello--world
Yu dissin' Pascal, my man?
Not at all. It way my first language too, but its not really fair to talk about how hard it is to learn, given its design goals.
Not at all. It way my first language too, but its not really fair to talk about how hard it is to learn, given its design goals.
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| What's difficult is going back to IBM mainframes, JCL, ... |
Is writing code for a mainframe so different from writing for PC ?
I thought when you stick to the standard every compiler should compile the code.
Why does it matter if the compiler is on a mainframe or PC ?
https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/foot.htm
Always raises a smile :)
http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
The same program (slightly more interesting than hello world), in many languages.
> Is writing code for a mainframe so different from writing for PC ?
https://www.verifine.org/Humor/mainframe.html
370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried. |
Always raises a smile :)
http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
The same program (slightly more interesting than hello world), in many languages.
> Is writing code for a mainframe so different from writing for PC ?
https://www.verifine.org/Humor/mainframe.html
Yes, mainframes are very different from a PC.
We still use them, but I do not deal with them at this level. My job is to move the stuff to a usable modern system so humans can use it, but the access layer to the mainframe keeps me from having to DIY for which I am grateful. Ill give it credit: it may be older than I am but its as fast as anything modern I have seen, faster than some of it. Using it is a choice of these awful no mouse screens where if you type past the width of the field it auto tabs to the next field, so thisguyhasastoopidlongname jones ends up with 1/3 of his first name in the first name, 1/3 of his first name in the last name, and 1/3 of his first name in the first line of the address along with his last name, and you have to go back and truncate it until it fits, ... or you can try talking to it directly, which is like dos version 0.2 only with fewer tools and commands.
We still use them, but I do not deal with them at this level. My job is to move the stuff to a usable modern system so humans can use it, but the access layer to the mainframe keeps me from having to DIY for which I am grateful. Ill give it credit: it may be older than I am but its as fast as anything modern I have seen, faster than some of it. Using it is a choice of these awful no mouse screens where if you type past the width of the field it auto tabs to the next field, so thisguyhasastoopidlongname jones ends up with 1/3 of his first name in the first name, 1/3 of his first name in the last name, and 1/3 of his first name in the first line of the address along with his last name, and you have to go back and truncate it until it fits, ... or you can try talking to it directly, which is like dos version 0.2 only with fewer tools and commands.
| Is writing code for a mainframe so different from writing for PC ? |
A PC is a PC; it has its local hardware, native character set, architecture, filesystem, ...
A mainframe is different. It's a tiny brain supported by lots of quite intelligent devices, all running concurrently, all consuming power equivalent to a town.
It's designed to run one program after the next sequentially (batch). In order to minimise the machine idle time, the programs (jobs) are configured ahead of time using a Job Control Language. Even the "interactive" stuff is a special add-on called the Time Sharing Option.
The JCL describes the resources required by each job, like the character set, the format of the filesystem, the environment of the program, the devices to be used ... Plus there's all this permissioning stuff; they're security mad in that environment; notionally, you're denied everything by default.
So yeah, it's not quite the same.
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