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

Sat Apr 28 15:00:01 UTC 2012

William,

You make a good point here.  While I would probably argue that COBOL is truly going away in American companies, it is not going away as quickly as are 
jobs that use a knowledge of COBOL, you have that right.  From what I've seen, COBOL maintenance and development jobs are most commonly those 
that are being outsourced to off-shore resources.  It isn't that one couldn't find a job using COBOL, but it is going to be hard.  Even large companies are 
trying to move toward solutions that are off-the-shelf where they can rely largely on another company to keep things running smoothly or where people 
they hire will already have some experience with the off-the-shelf software that they have.  Interestingly, the first COBOL program I ever wrote for my 
employer back in 1976 still runs every month, but it will soon be phased out.

Less clear is the role of large mainframes.  They are also threatened in some ways, but other nitches for them still exist.  The reliability is something that is 
still a plus, but even there, there is a lot of movement toward large servers.  I don't think it is real clear what corporate computing will look like in ten years.  
I still occasionally have to look at COBOL programs, but I spend a lot more time using SQL now than COBOL, and the problems I have to deal with have 
more to do with how tables and databases relate to one another rather than figuring out why alphabetic data got into a numeric field causing a 0C7 
ABEND.  Of course, that is partly because my job  as changed some, but the people who figure out ABENDs as the one above are primarily off-shore 
now.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:47:28 -0400, William Ritchhart wrote:

>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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