[nfbcs] [Fwd: Article on COBOL - Computerworld]

Fri Apr 27 19:30:59 UTC 2012

Big hair and mini-skirts, wow!
I work for a major hospital network.  Our main patient admission and
billing system was developed specifically for New York hospitals, though
they've tried to roll it out elsewhere.  There are 3 ways to access data
in this system: the system's own report language, COBOL, or PL1.  For
complicated tasks, COBOL is still the best.
I just got a mondo spec to add a bunch of fields to a program I wrote a
few years ago.  COBOL is still the best way to go.
I guess, years in the future, we will be buying a new system, and
switching to SQL.  I've been messing about with SQL some already.  I don't
know all the ins and outs, but, right now, COBOL looks a lot more
versatile for creating mondo files gathered from lots of sources.
Not everything can or should go through the web.
Not that it matters what I think.  I'm not buying systems, or hiring people.
Tracy

> I used to program in COBOL ... many years ago.  Heck, I even have my old
> COBOL textbook I learned from in the mid 1970's ... it had pictures of the
> computer room with the cute girls in the short skirts and big hair-do's
> handling the big disk packs and card readers!!  In other words, when Fred
> Flintstone was still driving on our streets!!!
>
> The only reason I see it that you'd still do COBOL programming is if your
> shop had a boat-load of old COBOL programs and you didn't want to invest
> the cost to convert them to some other language.  I'll say this in defense
> of cobol ... you could do many of the things in COBOL that you can do in
> an object oriented language.  For example, if you designed your apps
> correctly, you could reuse code by making a ton of subroutines .. small
> building blocks that could be called by many other consumers.  But ... I
> don't think COBOL really lends itself  to OO programming like other
> languages such as C++ or Java.  Not that you couldn't do it, but you don't
> have the more modern constructs such as inheritance and overloading just
> to name a couple of things.  I'm not saying that's enough to throw it out,
> but it's obvious the experts felt that these new techniques are useful and
> aid in rapid development ... something the industry is really in favor of.
>  So you really need to consider what the
>   new technology gets you before you just say ... "I'll just stick with my
> old COBOL".  You might be missing out on some good features that could
> really buy you efficiencies and benefits.
>
> So is COBOL totally defunct?  Perhaps not.  It all depends on whether you
> can get programmers who can, or who want to, program in the language.  I
> think as the population ages and younger kids come up, a company really
> has to consider the talent pool who wants to program in a language like
> that.  It's certainly not what they're teaching in schools today.  And I
> know here at our shop (I work for a major railroad) they can't find enough
> COBOL programmers and have decided to eliminate it in favor of Java and
> the web wherever they can.
>
> So is COBOL bad?  No, it's just a language.  You just need to figure out
> if you can keep it going, and if not, face the music and move on.
>
>
> ---- John Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu> wrote:
>> To some degree it depends on the programming language. Maybe there's
>> object
>> oriented cobol now, I wouldn't know. But its pretty much true that if
>> you
>> know one object oriented programming language, you know them all. Its
>> important because programming languages  come and go. When I interview
>> people, I care a little if they know the programming language we know.
>> But I
>> care way, way more that they have shown competency with several
>> programming
>> languages.
>>  --
>> New Gingrich for  lies --Barack Obama for jobs. It's your decision!
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>
>> To: "NFB in Computer Science Mailing List" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 8:43 AM
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] [Fwd: Article on COBOL - Computerworld]
>>
>>
>> > Hi Leslie.
>> > I don't know what programs offer COBOL anymore.  I just passed on an
>> > article that was passed on to me.
>> > It's true that, once one knows programming concepts, one can learn
>> lots of
>> > languages.  But, in my experience, knowing a language well lets me use
>> all
>> > kinds of things to make my code more efficient and/or understandable.
>> (Of
>> > course, no one seems to care about efficiency anymore, but I still
>> do.)
>> > And I know, when my boss is hiring, he'll give preference to someone
>> who
>> > already knows the languages we use the most, if he can find someone
>> who
>> > does.  And C is not something we use much at all, but COBOL is still
>> being
>> > written in my shop.  I expect it will be for at least another 10
>> years,
>> > maybe longer.
>> > On the other hand, the guy who gave me the article works for a bank
>> that
>> > is shipping jobs to India as fast as it can.  Maybe they'll finally
>> ship
>> > the CEO's job there as well, and it will be Bank of Mumbai, instead of
>> > Bank of NY. But the fat cats never cut their own jobs, oh my no.
>> > Tracy
>> >
>> >> Hi Tracy:
>> >>
>> >> From a rehab counselor's perspective, I didn't realize that COBOL was
>> >> still in demand. What training institutions still offer it?
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> New Gingrich for paychecks--Barack Obama for food stamps. It's your
>> >> decision!
>> >>
>> >>
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