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IBM will offer free COBOL training

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Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#31

Post by atoav »

watt wrote: post #21

It's a trap. The problem with those old codebases that governments, hospitals, big businesses are struggling with is not really the language, it's the engineering practices of that time with regards to constraints of old technology. The language is not the problem - lack of comments, bad variable naming, bad structure (little or no procedures or readability), and just sheer volume of it, is. It would be very interest…

> keeping the old UI and UX (which often is incredibly ergonomic)

I have the feeling that with the success of the iPhone many people forgot that a thing like a UI can have a target audience as well. If you make a tool that is beeing used twice a week for a minute at a time it has to look fundamentally different from a tool that is used 50 times every day.

With the former beeing intuitive is more valuable, while with the latter reducing friction is more valuable. This is a choice which has to be made – and sadly I often don't see it beeing made. People just make a UI that is akin to the ones Google or Apple make and call it a day.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#32

Post by metreo »

safgasCVS wrote: post #19

What other languages can we expect to see a similar surge in demand? FORTRAN? In the data analysis space my bet is on SAS

Fortran (standardized without caps for at least the last couple decades) is current to the 2018 release. I haven't come across anybody who cares or is using it. You do eventually see a lot of older code in it in symbolic and algebraic maths in the deeper code bases still because the algorithms are complex and nobody really wants to touch someone else work if it can still be wrapped in something like R or Python and is nearly as performant as C/++.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#33

Post by JustARandomGuy »

From the article: * State unemployment agencies are notoriously underfunded*

And there’s the problem summarized in less than a single sentence. Yes, they need help, but it’s the same kind of “help” as in “I want a BMW but I only have a dollar, please help”

There would be a ton more COBOL coders if companies paid the equivalent of FANG companies - I say this as a former COBOL coder myself

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#34

Post by metreo »

msla wrote: post #23
number6 wrote: post #14

I don't want to sound condescending but why can't these systems be rewritten in a modern language? Now is obviously not the right time to do this; I am wondering are there technical limitations to do his?

Here's some simple COBOL code: http://www.csis.ul.ie/cobol/examples/Conditn/Conditions.htm identification division. program-id. letters. data division. working-storage section. 01 Char PIC X. 88 Vowel VALUE "a", "e", "i", "o", "u". 88 Consonant VALUE "b", "c", "d", "f", "g", "h" "j" THRU "n", "p" THRU "t", "v" THRU "z". 88 Digit VALUE "0" THRU "9". 88 ValidCharacter VALUE "a" THRU "z", "0" THRU "9". procedure divisio…

It's actually still better on my eyes than JavaScript.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#35

Post by withdavidli »

Had to recruit for COBOL engineers 8 years ago. Almost impossible finding someone with less than 10 years of experience. Most were 15-20+ years of experience and about to retire. Many with COBOL experience moved to cloud tech that would never move back to COBOL that would cause them to be outdated. New people in the field seemingly only got trained because they were willing to learn it at a bank.

It's a struggle to hire these people cause there are so few people and many companies only want to hire local talent (within 20-50 miles, and don't want to do VISAs).

There's money to be made on supporting tech this old, likely more on the consulting side than becoming an internal employee.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#36

Post by dm319 »

jasonkester wrote: post #13

This isn't the first time the world has needed lots of new COBOL programmers to burst on a single project. I'd suggest the same solution as last time: pay people $500-$1,000 per hour on short term contracts to do so.

As a healthcare worker who also has an interest in programming - why does this comment not surprise me in HN? If a worldwide pandemic doesn't make you reflect on problems in our societal structure - that our key workers are the most poorly paid, but part of a necessary backbone of any country, and that the most over-paid workers are often the least 'key' at times like this - then I guess nothing will. But sure, the solution is just to pay programmers more money, because that is all they care about.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#38

Post by metreo »

metreo wrote: post #32
safgasCVS wrote: post #19

What other languages can we expect to see a similar surge in demand? FORTRAN? In the data analysis space my bet is on SAS

Fortran (standardized without caps for at least the last couple decades) is current to the 2018 release. I haven't come across anybody who cares or is using it. You do eventually see a lot of older code in it in symbolic and algebraic maths in the deeper code bases still because the algorithms are complex and nobody really wants to touch someone else work if it can still be wrapped in something like R or Python and i…

I guess the thing about Fortran, to circle back to your question, is that it isn't common in critical infrastructure.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#39

Post by kwhitefoot »

jasonkester wrote: post #13

This isn't the first time the world has needed lots of new COBOL programmers to burst on a single project. I'd suggest the same solution as last time: pay people $500-$1,000 per hour on short term contracts to do so.

That just gets them through this crisis but leaves everything else unchanged.

Someone needs to decide whether Cobol is going to live or die. If it is going to live then people have to stop pretending that it is not there, create proper training courses for it and recruit people to maintain and develop the systems properly. And of course the requirements should be reviewed and updated to include the capacity to cope with the volume of work that is being experienced by these systems.

Of course this won't happen because as soon as the crisis is past all those USD 1000 per hour people will be laid off, the employers will breath a sigh of relief that it is all over and go back to their old ways.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#40

Post by irrational »

dm319 wrote: post #36
jasonkester wrote: post #13

This isn't the first time the world has needed lots of new COBOL programmers to burst on a single project. I'd suggest the same solution as last time: pay people $500-$1,000 per hour on short term contracts to do so.

As a healthcare worker who also has an interest in programming - why does this comment not surprise me in HN? If a worldwide pandemic doesn't make you reflect on problems in our societal structure - that our key workers are the most poorly paid, but part of a necessary backbone of any country, and that the most over-paid workers are often the least 'key' at times like this - then I guess nothing will. But sure, the s…

How will you get them otherwise? There are way more jobs than qualified developers. Why would anyone want to work on an antiquated technology stack like Cobol? By the time they get up to speed on fixing the Cobol systems, the pandemic will be over. The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers.
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