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

Sat Apr 28 13:47:28 UTC 2012

COBOL isn't going away in American companies.  The American jobs with COBOL
are what's going away.  

I am not aware of any college or university regularly teaching COBOL.
However Indiana University does occasionally teach it.  It's usually a one
semester introduction.  After that the student is generally on their own.
Some companies do still offer it when they have a dire need.  Those are few
though.      

Thanks, William

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of majolls at cox.net
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 2:43 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] [Fwd: Article on COBOL - Computerworld]

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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> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
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