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US CIO/CTO: Idea of Hiring COBOL Coders Laughable
theodp writes "If you're a COBOL programmer, you're apparently persona non grata in the eyes of the nation's Chief Information and Chief Technology Officers. Discussing new government technology initiatives at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel quipped, 'I'm recruiting COBOL developers, any out there?,' sending Federal CTO Todd Park into fits of laughter (video). Lest anyone think he was serious about hiring the old fogies, VanRoekel added: 'Trust me, we still have it in the Federal government, which is quite, quite scary.' So what are VanRoekel and Park looking for? 'Bad a** innovators — the baddest a** of the bad a**es out there,' Park explained (video), 'to design, create, and kick a** for America.' Within 24 hours of VanRoekel's and Park's announcement, 600 people had applied to be Presidential Innovation Fellows."
Another example in a fine history of mindless government bigger-dick wagging. Pretty close to being up there with: "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring 'Em On".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
You mean ass. No need for silly regular expressions.
I'm recruiting COBOL developers, any out there?
They are out doing obscenely high-paid consultant and maintenance work for banks, insurance companies, etc.
I had planned on doing the same thing with C development, but those damn meddling Apple kids have made C popular again.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm sorry to re-post the same comment from another story, but in this case it seems very apropos:
Agreed. As someone who's worked for the U.S. federal government, the amount of effort required to comply with various directives, even to accomplish the most basic of tasks, is maddening.
For example, suppose you needed to order some laptops for your developers, and some compilers as well. Private sector: 4 hours to shop around, and you'd have the order fulfilled in about 3 weeks. Most of that delay would be for custom builds of the laptops by Dell, HP, etc.
In the government: 20 man-hours gathering competitive bids from 3 vendors who agree to work under the pricing schedule your agency requires. 4 man-hours / 2 calendar days ensuring the order complies with Clinger-Cohen and Section 508 regulations. 20 man-hours / 2 calendar weeks getting permission to place the order from one approving authority. Another month going back-and-forth with another approving authority. Then the order gets placed.
The opportunity costs and labor costs associated with the effort and delays in getting s**t done in the federal government is mind-numbing. When feds get bashed for having, in some cases, more costly compensation packages than the private sector, there's one factor that rarely comes up in conversation: any competent software developer will demand a pay premium in exchange for putting up with this soul-sucking crap on a daily basis.
Park seems to like a**es
Seriously... if there were a new world and you can get on a ship and go.... and never come back... how many would just do it.
that's an extreme reaction but it's just one stupid thing after another... I just want to go...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
COBOL is really the most advanced programming language ever developed. I don't see why the U.S. government has abandoned COBOL for slower, more complex languages like C, Java, Python, and Ruby. All new government development should be taking place in COBOL, and it's really inappropriate for the U.S. CIO/CTO to go out there and say otherwise.
But I'd hate to be the poor souls stuck with porting (and, god help them ,refactoring) forty+ years of working COBOL code . Talk about a thankless task - if you get it right, noone will know anything happened, and if you get it wrong, you'll never hear the end of it.
Are you a bad enough dude to innovate the President?
I don't think so.
In this context, "badass" means "young and arrogant, willing to get screwed over"
Actually, I learned a lot from doing COBOL work. But it's clear that experience doesn't count. Instead employers do buzzword search on resumes for the latest hip technology or alphabet soup "certifications".
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the industry didn't choose to adopt one labor-intensive technology after another. Most of the current programming fads don't scale up for large projects (>100k SLOC) any better than a lot of the stuff we used 20-30 years ago. Too much training and education, and then too many tools, focus on the individual, rather than on the team of developers/maintainers for long-lived applications. But I suspect a lot of senior managers think that large systems are irrelevant; everything will be a 1000 line "app".
This is a problem that is -independent- of the inefficiencies implicit in working for the government (as either an employee or a contractor.)
For what it's worth, I have always insisted that any programmer/developer that I had any influence over hiring must have demonstrated competence in more than 1 programming language/development approach. And "C/C++" didn't count as 2 languages (both because so much of C++ is bad C with an OOP veneer, and because a lot of core concepts, including bad habits, are shared between the two languages.)
Hey Karmashock, when does that ship sail?
Shouldn't that be handled by the manager or someone?
The actual coders should never have to look up the prices on any of their tools. New hardware should just show up as soon as the manager can complete all the paperwork and the political fights.
We blazed a trail with COBOL. Other languages may be better, but COBOL was the early language that made computers useful to a large number of business's and governments. The reason there is so much of it, is that it works.
~S
They sound like teenagers.
Also, good job fucking up Unicode yet again, Slashdot. It's been how many years?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
There, I said it.
The US CIO/CTO is a brogrammer.
Dilbert RSS feed
This is how you create and recruit brogrammers. They want frat boys to do their systems.
The author of that 'old fogies' article explains how he used to agree old (over 40) programmers were laughable, but now that he's reached that age, he seems to feel that experience superior to youth and well worth the extra money.
Now, In my experience, this is only true up to a point. There seems to be very little difference in productivity beyond say 5 to 10 years of experience, while an additional 10 years of experience in a technology phased out years ago and not at all used in a company's current projects is simply doesn't add enough to warrant a higher hourly rate.
A good techie stays up to date on the latest technology, but if you are hiring for a project based on scala, and have the choice between two programmers with 5 years of scala experience, but one of the two has an additional 15 years of C++ experience and demands twice the hourly rate, hiring the more experienced guy would simply not make sense. It's not ageism, it's common sense. If they cost the same, I'd almost certainly pick the older one, but alas.
It may be hard to maintain, but COBOL works and it works without too many bugs. COBOL is usually replaced with web GUIs which are prone to exploits and require a lot more processing power. They do look pretty though.
I'm sorry, but these people are completely out of touch with reality in federal IT. I'm 25 and have been working in Federal IT since finishing college three years ago and of the 3 large DoD systems I've worked on, two of them have essentially all of their business logic and all of their batch processing written in COBOL with a fugly JSP front-end, and the third is a Java EE/SEAM app (re-engineered from an old Unisys language..) that directly interfaces with one of those previous two systems so it still relies on COBOL as well.
99% of the devs that get hired around here (recent college grads like myself being one of few exceptions) have at least a couple of years of prior experience developing in COBOL because, guess what? Most everything around here in some way shape or form involves a COBOL batch process or back-end. Sure, we have lots of newer stuff like .Net, Java (SEAM, Spring, older Struts projects, etc.), Flex, etc. but there is still TONS of stuff that will never leave COBOL. The only COBOL systems that die around here do so because they've been replaced by an ERP (most are only on life-support because they're "scheduled" to be replaced... in a decade) or they're still hosted on a mainframe and never got tech-refreshed to a *nix mid-tier system. Generally when something does get tech-refreshed it costs so much money and misses so much that it would have been cheaper just to hire a couple of maintenance programmers to keep the COBOL system running and/or put a pretty new front-end on and call it a day.
I won't even touch on all the rules and regulations involved that make this even more of a cluster, but know that most of the devs working with this stuff are good people working hard to improve things, we just tend to have our hands tied. I'm all for the big bosses having a call to arms for innovation and "AMERICAHHHH FUCK YEAH!!!!!" to but for existing systems, in most cases there is too much money poured down the drain in an effort to attempt to tech refresh things that work perfectly fine in COBOL.
Most good coders are not going to be hugely interested in whether they are a GS-12 or if they have a shot at moving to GS-13. They want decent pay, good working conditions and colleagues, and interesting projects.
There are good people (and great bosses) in the federal government. The problem is that there is also a huge amount of dead weight: petty people building their personal little empires and playing pathetic office politics. The "iron rule of bureaucracy" will not be denied - even if you are lucky enough to work in a super organization, don't worry: its soul will eventually be sucked out by bureaucrats interested only in extending the bureaucracy.
This is why government organizations should be kept to a minimum. In industry, when the deadwood has accumulated, either it gets cleared out or the company dies. In government, you just get a funding increase.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I always remember the following Dilbert strip from 1997 when I hear the words Cobol programmer:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-11-04/
I once worked in a small business that was the exception. Every issue that came up was quickly dealt with with a director level meeting. We took decisions and followed them through. Unfortunately we grew so fast I ended up with a bad case of burnout, but having downsized to a lower intensity career I've often seen the effects of decision incapability in suppliers, vendors and in house.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Yeah, you're going to have to wait your turn until the rest of us will be done doing the same thing after we retire. We're older than you, we planned to do this before you, so you'll have to wait your turn.
Quite a lot of the inhabitants of the Caribbean were very friendly towards Columbus and his successors, and you know how that turned out. Anybody capable of building an interstellar space ship is likely to regard you as farm animal, not equal. Unlike dogs, we are not particularly cute.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Now remind me how to adjust the ignition timing on a modern ECU. Hint: there isn't a little screw on the distributor any more.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A Bit of Fry & Laurie: My Ass sketch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUKOebCbINc
I'll add a point, perhaps a little inflammatory. Your grammar and syntax are not very good. That suggests you don't routinely communicate at senior management level, where that kind of thing gets noticed. Perhaps your comment reflects an inability to see the bigger picture, and your under-valuation of experience is linked to that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's the public sector, no one innovates there.
Except when some dumbass kid writes that older coders can get "obscenely high-paid" work of any kind! In the tech industry seeing ANYBODY over 50 working (even on a short term contract) is a rarity and probably a fluke! And seeing a 60+ COBOL programmer implies that you are hallucinating!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
A real programmer can write COBOL in any language.
So, rather than looking for programmers who may have good experience of delivering and supporting critical systems over a long period of time, we prefer l33t kids who create everything at web-scale, who think functional programming is new, and think github is a backup solution.
Cool. That is so neat. But wait, my tax dollars are paying for this? Hmm......
I thought all the COBOL programmers tacked a zero onto their rates in 1999, did one last deathmarch for Y2K, then retired.
I can hardly imagine a "kick ass innovator" being happy with a typical federal job.
Any innovation would have to go though untold layers of bureaucracy before it was implemented. Also, what gets implemented is not the best ideas, but the ideas that get the approval of know-nothing officials. What gets implemented depends on contacts from the good-old-boy network, political campaign contributions, that sort of thing.
Her Majesty, Grace Hopper, is not amused.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
I've been a coder, UNIX admin, Linux admin for close to 15 years. I've seen one crappy programming/scripting/whatever language come and go. COBOL is reliable, effective, and easy to use. COBOL was designed by Read Admiral Grace Hopper, a founder of the technology we use today. I wish I had COBOL for Linux. Then maybe I wouldn't have to listen to some dev squeak about some amazing, fantastic, BROKEN, INEFFICIENT, and often STUPID programming language. And what do I care about what some CTO thinks? It's not like he knows anything other than the art of bul!@#$.
What's so scary about running COBOL? If there are systems written in COBOL that are doing what they need to do, why is that scary? You could spend millions of dollars rewriting the system in something more kick ass (not sure what's considered kick ass enough for the US Government - Java? .Net? Ruby?) and then you end up with million dollar system that does the exact same thing as the system before, except for the inevitable bugs that creep into any large software project.
Or you can start from scratch, and write new specs for the system and build a system with new kick ass functionality, then you end up spending millions getting the stakeholders together to write the specs, then millions more actually writing the new kick ass software, and decade later, it's been deployed with all of the major bugs worked out (or worked around). Except that whatever kick ass software you chose to write it in is no longer kick ass, so you need to start over again with something more kick ass.
I worked at a company like that once - the new CEO decided that the old system written in C was no longer kick ass enough, so he decreed that it had to be written in something modern and kick ass -- in this case, it was Visual Basic that was deemed kick ass enough for it. So the company spent years specing and rewriting a system to be deployed across 1500 remote locations. In testing, they found that their VSAT communications system couldn't provide enough bandwidth and adequate latency to each location, so they embarked upon an expensive project to replace all of the VSAT connections with high bandwidth wired connections (this predated DSL and other cheap ways to get fast ethernet connections). In the meantime, the core developers of the original project saw the writing on the wall and left the company to start their own consulting company - they made a killing maintaining the original system while the company focused on building the replacement.
5 years later, this 2 year project still wasn't ready for deployment, the company got bought out before the project ever got off the ground, and I'm sure the CEO got a healthy bonus for his "vision".
Double the number of bad asses where signed up to be the Presidential Innovation Fellows. Only the ones with the plastic 6-pack and the ability to wield the spear of enlightened mind in a coordinated thrusting motion where selected.
The younger guys don't see them because they're up front debugging the PHP code to the new uber cool banking interface. The grey beard COBOL guys are in the back optimizing the banking software--the _real_ banking software. The younger guys have no reason to think about the grey beards. They're too busy debugging their javascript RPC library so someone can can display their account balance on Facebook. Anyway, they've never once had a problem having their check or wire deposit go through.
You should tell that to the place I work. I see as many people 45+ as I do my age.
Where the hell do you work? Wait, I can guess the answer, Sillicon Valley? I'm right, aren't I? So, the point being that just because you don't see any 60+ COBOL guys around, doesn't mean they aren't. You know all those legacy systems... the ones that have more up time than your life span? The ones that were installed before you were walking, and haven't moved since? Because I DO. So does your local government office, and your local bank, and your local CC processor. Did you know that your water company probably still uses and old AS400 for account management? Because I do. Did you know that every street light in the greater Portland (OR) area is tied to a positively ancient server running some obscure COBOL? I do. Do you know the guy that gets paid to keep that server running, despite 3 separate efforts over the years (totaling many millions of dollars) to replace it? I do. Want to know what he gets paid to be the ONLY person in the state with access to that machine? I'll bet you wouldn't believe me.
What you kids in SV think constitutes the computer world... well, lets just say that you are standing in a valley, and you can't see the rest of the world from there.
You people can joke all you like about old languages.. I'm getting paid to use, maintain and write FORTRAN code.
In the past, I have written FOSS in FORTRAN and put it in the public domain. People still download it on a weekly basis.
FORTRAN has gone through 10 updates and code that was written on cardboard in the sixties can work together with OO code from last week.
FORTRAN is the back-end for the NumPy and SciPy numerical libraries. Python is just a fancy way of writing FORTRAN.
And, no, I'm not an old fart (yet), but I can chase you off my lawn nevertheless.
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time...
So complain about the problems of government or big business. Why are you there?
If you work for yourself, (and have the balls to do so), you set the procurement policies.
As far as COBOL is concerned, if tech lives somewhere, it has to be maintained. Relays, vacuum tubes, antennas, steam engines.... they are out there running now. Can you fix them, C++-Guys? Do you know enough about how they work to make decent decisions on how to replace them? Do you know your way around assembly language?
Laugh if you want, but the fact that there are people out here who know enough to do difficult work so that others can make little toys like Angry Birds run on hardware they don't understand and achieve what for results? Entertained idiots?
sorry, but this is one one my biggest pet peeves. using asterisks to "censor" the word does absolutely nothing, except come off as condecending to the reader. it is not more polite, as anyone with half a brain knows what the word is, thereby accomplishing nothing. shouldn't we finally grow the fuck up and realize that butt, ass, rear, et al., are synonyms and equally interchangeable in any conversation. applying childish morality scales to words only makes said people look like simple, childish, self-righteous cunts. yes, i am thinking of the children.
...
We had to replace a system at a telco used to figure out all the updates for phonebooks to send to yellowpages. But no-one knew all the details of what it did. We inferred a lot but wanted to look at the code to make sure. The code was written in the late 60s or early 70s and was working good for at least 30 years. Their system deleted files that hadn't been touched in 5 or 10 years. No-one had to do any bug fixes in at least 25 years, so no-one touched or even looked for the source code files in all that time. And that was a good thing because the system had removed the source code at least 20 years before we got there to replace that system.
Fortunately one of the old timers set to retire in the next month came along and said,
"I wondered when someone was going to ask to look at the source code again. I kept a copy in my personal directory. Do you want a copy?"
Thank goodness he had it and saved us a ton of time. That code ran fine for all those years and really didn't need to be replaced except they reasonably wanted to maintain only one type of architecture.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
These guys reminded me of the web developer in this old IBM commercial. Yeah man, let's put flaming skulls on there, it'll be kick ass! If either of those two guys looked at source code they'd probably have an aneurysm.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I was actually offered a COBOL job this week - life insurance company backend. Pay is 65k/year in USD, which is not that bad for an entry level job in Germany.
All the COBOL programmers I know are in forced retirement, and can't even get work at $25/hr.
Those consultants you're referring to are the ones who wrote that shit to begin with and they're well connected with the banks already.
I'm betting neither of these two ever read it.
"It's the Government of the United States," Juanita says.
"Where hackers go to die".
I just hired two programmers, one is 59 and one is 61. I'm sure it's due to the tech: C++ / VB6 and some .NET, but I needed developers to maintain a system we won a contract to support. Perhaps I'm odd ... but age never factors into my hiring decisions.
You know what? You work for the government, you get a pension. And you don't have to deal with employment "at will" bullshit. And yes, you can make 6 figures working for the government, and yes you work on things that probably matter more than what you work on now.
So if he wants people with more impressive skills, there's no reason he can't get them. I mean it's an old, verbose language. I doubt it has many advanced features, arcane syntax not withstanding.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
When I took programming in college 80-83 I took Pascal and BASIC, but COBOL and Fortran were viable options. As it turns out Pascal was used to program the Mac, Fortran became a language of science, and COBOL with all its mocking became the language of big iron and mission critical applications so pervasive and persistent no series of program language fads or legion of Windblows installers could overcome it.
COBOL is in our lives. Someone should make Object/perl/python COBOL. :D
If I learned COBOL I would totally be making bank in programming now.
JJ
Um, no. You don't see them because they are all valuable enough to the industries that need them, and mature enough and proven their work ethic enough that they're all working half days from home or their vacation homes, then golfing in the afternoon.
It's a whole different industry at this level and age kiddo.
HMMM.
What is the big difference between the private and public sectors?
Is it that ONLY "Republicans" slander the public sector?
In my not-so-humble opinion Republicrats slander anyone and everything in their re-election efforts.
---
Having worked in both public and private sectors as a licensed and registered "tech" worker, ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE; a suit is a suit is a suit; I have yet to work for anyone who passed to the 'dark side' who was worth a damn either before or after.
This is why there are "go to guys/gals" and "informal networks" (no relation to the org chart). The internet isn't the only thing that routes around damage.
...unless we're willing to admit that people like Benjamin Franklin were badasses, themselves - but even then, the very suggestion of being a "badass" does not sound to me like it could be in close alignment with goals of technological development. I don't suppose it merits much more comment than that.
P.S. It would be inadvisable to piss on peoples' shoes - COBOL programmers or otherwise - if one wishes to sincerely motivate people, whether in regards to technological development or pretty much anything else.
No need for silly regular expressions.
I think you mean globbing. A regular expression for "a**" would be something like "a..".
I know we are all testosterone-laden here, but at least try to show some professionalism.
Please don't use the phrase "double pointer" and the word "ass" in the same thread.
( o ) --- ( o )
Yeah -- let's get the creme de la creme of self proclaimed bad asses leveraging this weeks hot tech.
Coming soon: Node.js powered jQuery sites that only work in Webkit -- because IE, Firefox and those "other" browsers aren't cool enough. Wait -- accessibility Standards? Who the Fuck needs those? It works fine on the fucking iPad. Oh the Gimps and Retards? Fuck them.
So, Mr VanRoekel, would you care to list the programming languages you're competent in?
I suspect we might be in a tumbleweed and bells situation.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The guy got voted in because he promised "Change"
If that's the "Change", I rather have the whole buck
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Might, but a big part of their functionality is in the hardware they run on. Mainframe hardware and personal computer (let alone server) hardware are very different.You really can't have one without the other.
I've never understood the reasoning behind not wanting to hire old guys. I can understand why you wouldn't want to hire a grumpy, inflexible old veteran who insists on recoding everything into COBOL because he has no other skills. But those are a minority as far as I can tell. I know several older DBA's, system architects, designers with even nation-wide fame: they get hired every day by the *smart* companies that want to ship product.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
They want frat boys to do their systems.
I wouldn't mind a couple of frat boys doing my system. ;)
Not really. You still need to declare variables, state their type, etc.
Now it's time for "all you youngins' sit yer asses down and listen to MY old story! Back when things were for real, and still are today! It's still there, children, the old code in the guts of the president."
I do volunteer-work at a charity warehouse where people donate stuff to be cleaned up, repaired, and sold. A lot of it is old crap. A lot of the people who volunteer there are over fifty. Whenever some old piece of junk comes in I take the time to eyeball it and see whether it'll be worth putting out, because it's true that there was a time when they "built them like they used to", and things from a certain era tend to have long lifetimes. By contrast, a lot of things built more recently aren't even serviceable (literally, you can't get in and clean them up or repair them without breaking important things on the way in), and while "serviceable" went out of fashion as a term meaning "not going straight to a scrap heap", it was right around the same time that the market started seeing "disposable" versions of everything.
I digress. So whenever I'm about to scrap something that's just plain not going to be any good, and one of these older folks sees it, oops, it's time to hold up the show. "Don't throw that thing out, those things are better than the ones they make today". They all have to do it. It's either hide the fact that this ten-pound, steel clothes iron with the rust innards is getting dismantled and the copper and steel separated, or I'm going to have to relinquish it to the hands of somebody who feels the need to trumpet the triumphs of yesteryear, even in the face of the fact that what we're celebrating is the object's demise, the fact that no, it did not last literally forever. "Oh, well, I guessh you can shcrap it, shunny. Bon voyage, old toasterrrrr*gasp*"
What I see in comments here closely resembles all of that. People going on about how things of yesteryear were so much better and so much stronger. Or still being used today. But the article isn't about "COBOL will last forever!" it's about, "gee, everybody, time to rip all the rotten old code out of the guts of the president so he can digest the foodstuffs of tomorrow".
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Oh, yeah dude totally, dude, Benjals was totally like badass, dude. BFF.
Like, dude, those glasses that he made for seeing the secret map? Gnarly.
Oh, dude, or how he caught the electrics in the jar? So for real. So badass.
I have an idea, let's go around to elementary schools and see how many kids are *still* being taught that Benjamin Franklin caught electricity in a jar, or that Washington would never tell a lie, or that the pilgrims sat down with the "injuns" at a commemorative feast.
I would be pleased just to poll how many children are still taught to say "injun" in what regions. Just to point out that some things are held onto past their time for reasons not always well understood.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Want to know what he gets paid to be the ONLY person in the state with access to that machine?
Coffee and donuts?
Thanks.
You're welcome?
Objective-C is to C as Javascript is to Java. Thanks.
Javascript is an extension of Java?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'm a 60+ COBOL programmer. I now program in other languages too (French, Greek...) But also PHP, ecmascript, Objective-C... I wish I had friends..
Good for you. Unfortunately, this attitude is not pervasive. At 45 I don't consider myself old yet when I see posts from 20somethings stating you don't see anyone older than 50, it's disheartening. I have an engineering background and approach software development as an engineering activity. I would hope companies want to hire disciplined, productive developers but the norm seems to be to hire based on an acronym alphabet soup. During interviews, it's rare to hear questions about your development approach, it's often about "how many years of XYZ do you have?" it's not the programming languages that are important or the brand of datavase server, it should be "how good of an engineer am I hiring." Also, equally unfortunate is the prefiltering HR departments do on resumes, older engineers often don't even get an interview. I've removed about half of my experience from my resume so it doesn't go so far back - age is easy to deduce when you experience going back to 80s.
It does a good job at stuff that nobody else seems to care about. And anyone who's seen XML should stop calling COBOL wordy. I still use COBOL when I need what it does.
I use MicroFocus (originally AcuCOBOL) - works fine.
You mean duma**
And I mean dumba**
I find the idea of these guys being the federal CIO/CTO after the next presidential election laughable.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
All the COBOL programmers I know are in forced retirement, and can't even get work at $25/hr.
Really?
Send me their contact info. My employer is currently paying finder fees for new PA & SA hires.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
I'm 45+, you insensitive clod(s)!
AFAIK, I've only done COBOL once, for a diesel sequencer IIRC. Most of the rest has been c and c++
Being a COBOLer, I have to say, jobs are hard to come by. BUT, I also gotta say when they do come, they are very profitable because there are SO few COBOLers who aren't on walkers now.
Not only can they get it but there aren’t enough of them to go aroundI know because I am not that old and I had to learn COBOL to be able to take on some projects that my company couldn't otherwise staff. Luckily, it's not actually all that hard to pick up. I spend about a week reading a book, asked for sample program source code from the customer, and installed COBOL onto a spare Linux machine I had to play with it and learn.
I really don't want government employees to "disrupt government" or to bring an "entrepreneurial mindset" or "innovation" to government. Entrepreneurs and their innovation carries enormous risks, and I don't want these people gambling with my tax dollars.
Of course, van Roekel doesn't even have entrepreneurial credentials anyway, he is a rich old MIcrosoft fogy, which means that he likely understands neither fiscal restraint nor the needs of IT in government.
Come next election, just remember who hired these jokers and put US government IT in the hands of Microsoft cronies.
"A modern computer without cobol and fortran is like chocolate cake without mustard and ketchup"
(A quote from usenix, at least 25 years old....cobol was old at least 25 years ago)
Also, I remember some computer history when I studied a programming languages course in university: The cobol developers rushed to create a language to use with the newly available hardware. Since the hardware was developing rapidly, they expected software to develop equally rapidly, so they rushed cobol out the door. They never expected it to be in use 6 months later, and 5 years after the fact, when they realised that people were still using it, they tried to make changes to it but were restricted quite a bit in the name of backward compatibility. They publicly stated (Grace Hopper among them) that if they had expected it to last more than 6 months, they would have done a better job of it in the first place.
What they should be paying those remaining few cobol developers to do is write a cobol to C or Java/C# converter or something. And, put the final nail in that coffin, before there is no one left who can write it.
Maybe this is the Fed's solution to combating cyberterrorism. Write everything in a language that nobody elsewhere in the world understands. Now, are they looking for volunteers to guard these new codetalkers and perhaps kill them if necessary to prevent them falling into enemy hands?
COBOL coders are almost all over 55 and many are over 60!
45? my son is 47!
Kids ;-).
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
You are also a lying sack of shit "Anonymous Coward", In Tech it works like this!
At 40 you only get contracts (and a rare perm hire)
At 50 you will only get short term emergency contracts (rarely/if ever)
At 60 while they can't laugh in your face, you shouldn't bother
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
From my experience the problem isn't with the program (other than the fact that it can't integrate with anything, without a COBOL pro of course), but with the fact that many of these programs are still running on their original hardware, which is usually beyond even what we would consider obsolete. Many of these systems are the "don't f-ing touch it" or even look at it too hard as everyone that knew exactly what it does, did, or continues to do are long gone. Put it in a locked closet or room, and throw away the key.
But eventually something on them just break, then systems go down, and related systems, etc...
And then they hire a COBOL guy, and are probably willing to pay decent money at that point.
Which really has absolutely NOTHING to do with COBOL and everything to do with poor systems management.