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Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You. (wsj.com)
Despite its advanced age, Cobol is still the most prevalent programming language in the financial-services industry world-wide. Software programmed in Cobol powers millions of banking transactions every day and underpins critical computer mainframes. WSJ: And Cobol isn't going away anytime soon. Banks and other companies have come to the uncomfortable realization that ripping out old mainframes is pricey and complicated. Transitioning to new systems is likely to take years, and besides, a lot of the older tech works just fine. The problem is that Cobol isn't popular with new programmers. So, with a generation of Cobol specialists retiring, there is a continuing hunt to find a new generation of programmers to service this technology. In Texas, Mr. Hinshaw's (an anecdote in the story) company, the Cobol Cowboys, a group of mostly older programmers, is training U.S. military veterans in the programming language. Accenture is coaching hundreds of Cobol programmers every year in India and the Philippines to work at banks. In Malaysia, one consultancy that provides engineers versed in Cobol for its clients, iTAc MSC Outsourcing, has adopted the slogan "Keeping the Dinosaurs Alive." A host of companies offer online courses in Cobol in places like South Africa, India and Bangladesh. Developing economies are key technology-outsourcing centers for banks. Further reading: Major Banks and Parts of Federal Gov't Still Rely On COBOL, Now Scrambling To Find IT 'Cowboys' To Keep Things Afloat.
oh, not again ... they do not want COBOL programmers, they want programmers who know CICS transactions and DB2, VSAM, etc, who have enough experience to come in and fix production business logic ... I see this article every year or two and it's ... let's all say it together ... NOT COBOL PROGRAMMERS ANYONE WANTS ... if you know COBOL but don't know CICS, you will not get a job... and, hey, there is a huge glut of out of work CICS experts to pick from.
The hard part is reading and following piles of legacy code, some of which may have been written in the "go to" days.
Table-ized A.I.
I programmed in COBOL. I liked it.
It was easy for me to understand.
What was damned near impossible was straightening out the spaghetti code already in place.
The way to understand an existing system is to fuck around with it and get inside the programmer's head.
Once done, I can anticipate what's coming.
When a system is a hybrid of decades of code by quacks and pros alike, it's a goddam maze.
Management doesn't take that as an excuse and I excused myself from the management.
While the wage was competitive, the stress wasn't worth it.
I'll do startup with COBOL, but there's no market for that.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.