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Department of Homeland Security Still Uses COBOL (softpedia.com)
The Department of Defense has promised to finally stop managing the U.S. nuclear arsenal with floppy disks "by the end of 2017". But an anonymous reader shares Softpedia's report about another startling revelation this week from the Government Accountability Office: Another agency that plans to upgrade is the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which uses COBOL, a programming language from the '50s to manage a system for employee time and attendance. Unfortunately for the VA, there were funds only to upgrade that COBOL system, because the agency still uses the antiquated programming language to run another system that tracks claims filed by veterans for benefits, eligibility, and dates of death. This latter system won't be updated this year. Another serious COBOL user is the Department of Homeland Security, who employs it to track hiring operations, alongside a 2008 IBM z10 mainframe and a Web component that uses a Windows 2012 server running Java.
Personnel files are serious business. A 2015 leak of the secret service's confidential personnel files for a Utah Congressman (who was leading a probe into high-profile security breaches and other missteps) led the Department of Homeland Security to discipline 41 secret service agents.
Personnel files are serious business. A 2015 leak of the secret service's confidential personnel files for a Utah Congressman (who was leading a probe into high-profile security breaches and other missteps) led the Department of Homeland Security to discipline 41 secret service agents.
That's all I have to say.
Department of Homeland Security $18B over budget and 5 years late on a software designed to update personnel files. "(Big software consultancy) was supposed to have finished the new project based on (popular technology in 2016) in 8 months for $6M. Six years later the system is not functioning correctly, is full of security holes and is already obsolete."
(Big software consultancy) noted that there were minor changes in the specification but that they expect money to be thrown at the project more or less indefinitely. "We pay our campaign contribution requirements regularly and so see no reason why we should be held accountable for any delays".
Your bank, your insurance company, and any large corporation likely has COBOL programs running in their environment.
What it the issue with using COBOL? Is it the age of the language or the fact that all your professors in college choose not to teach it?
Using a proven tool to solve a problem is called being practical.
Ken
Who cares that they use COBOL? It's still a maintained language. The most recent standard is from 2014, just like C++. There are compilers for the language targeting virtually every platform that exists, including the JVM and .NET CLR, still under active development and support. The language supports object-oriented programming, although admittedly the verbosity certainly skyrockets there. Many of the largest financial institutions in the US rely on COBOL. Many government standardized file formats are very obviously driven by the nature of COBOL's structured I/O.
The bigger question is whether or not these organizations still retain staff that are capable of maintaining these programs. It doesn't matter if the code was originally written 60 years ago or last year if nobody knows how it works or how to fix it.
The real issue is that younger engineers think that all software needs to be new, shiny and preferably, in their pet language.
I once worked in a shop where a group of very young engineers spent several years trying to re-write an old and fairly complex build system that was written in perl. They weren't re-writing it because it was slow or buggy or anything like that. They were re-writing it because they didn't like perl. And their reason for not liking perl was that it wasn't spelled "ruby". Years of work by several engineers to replace the perl program and they never got it to the state where it was as fast and reliable as the perl. Eventually the project was cancelled and they just found someone who knew perl and he adds a new feature every once in a while.
I've also seen scientific shops decide that they need to replace all their fortran code with python for vacuous reasons like "modernization". This is frequently paid for by our tax money and, after years of development, if the python even becomes robust enough to deploy, they are shocked to find that the new code runs an order of magnitude slower than the old code and sometimes gives incorrect answers.
This is the nature of the modern software industry. If something is written in COBOL/Fortran/perl, it needs to be re-written in python or ruby or whatever the pet language of the week is. Not because the old stuff doesn't work, because the old stuff is old. Younger engineers love to re-invent the wheel as long as they can use their pet language.
It's even easier than that:
1. Put aside your age biases
2. Hire one of the multitude of experienced COBOL developers who cannot find jobs because they're over 50
As a hiring manager, I see too many of my peers pass over older professionals in favor of some young hotshot they think is "cheap" and will work long hours. They don't recognize that this hotshot is padding his resume and biding his time until he finds the cool job he really wants, usually within 2-4 years. Meanwhile, those "old" pros would crank out far more quality code in their 40-45 hour weeks than hotshot would in 60, and they'll be happy to stick around for the long haul.
(And no, I'm not suggesting that all older developers are better than all younger ones. People are people. But rampant age discrimination is one reason this industry struggles to find good people.)