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IBM will offer free COBOL training

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Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#61

Post by rgmt »

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…

But who would rewrite it for the low salaries? Most people I know are not interested in low-level correctness at all, the open source C++ projects on GitHub with a high churn rate always have tons of corner case bugs.

If you don't get the right people, the rewrite would be an overengineered object oriented nightmare with an endless stream of bugs.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#62

Post by spindle »

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…

Absolutely (and I say that as an erstwhile mainframe COBOL programmer). The language itself is dead easy.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#63

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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?

>> I don't want to sound condescending but why can't these systems be rewritten in a modern language?

Cobol was a modern language 50 years ago. Python will be an ancient language 50 years from now. What do we do? Keep rewriting everything every 50 years?

And those ancient Cobol codebases actually have a big advantage: they've been maintained for so long that all the major bugs have been virtually eliminated. Creating a new system from scratch means another 10 to 20 years of maintance until the new system reaches the stability of the old one.

This is no joke. Given that most of the Cobol running today is running on mainframes at banks and card networks and the like, "a new bug" may translate to a few hundred thousand dollars of losses.

There's no point in building a new house of cards every few decades.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#64

Post by lokedhs »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #59
lokedhs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I have attempts to learn COBOL on a few occasions, but it's always stopped by the fact that there are, as far as I can tell, only three ways to do it without investing sometimes insurmountable amounts of money: The first is GNU Cobol. It's quite functional for its intended purpose: To port mainframe applications to Linux. However, when writing a new application on Linux you usually want to do things like acc…

>> They do give you ssh access to the Unix-compatibility environment though so maybe it's possible to edit files using Tramp in Emacs locally. It's a UNIX shell. You can always use ed :)

You can actually ssh into it and use vi. That's probably the easiest way to do it. However, the edit-compile-test cycle is somewhat complicated.

You need to first edit the file, fine, you can use vi. Then you need to go into ISPF (or TSO) on a 3270 terminal to submit the batch job that compiles the code (and possible runs it). Then you need to go into SDSF to view the results of the compilation.

Back in the 70's this was an acceptable way of working, but not what a modern programmer would expect.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#65

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

"when Vowel" is not very different to bog standard switch-statement magic. Actually in this case it looks like Cobol is almost doing a kind of pattern matching. Which is cool. Although (my Cobol is a bit rusty) I think there might be a more elaborate way to write "when Vowel" that hides less of the actual process? Not sure.

Cobol is really not such a bad language. It's just got a lot of ...ceremony. All those forced divisions and sections. But that's a feature: in the olden days, structured programming was a big thing. And an experienced Cobol programmer can take a quick look at a big Cobol file and find where everything is in a blink.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#66

Post by bryanrasmussen »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #48
brnt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just finished a contract with a hospital that built a lot of stuff in house in the 80ies based on a C (still pre C89 in many places) and Delphi/Pascal. The problem is indeed volume (over 10MLoC), two or three wizards supporting it all, but firmly coding like it's '83. No training of newcomers whatsoever, and thus really no way to contribute. If you manage to get some support, it will be once a year and in the form of…

Is it possibly not a management problem at the core? I mean, I know exactly what you mean about suits like to ignore the future, but I've worked with a few 'wizards' who, once they've got the job under their belt, use it to keep other people out. They'll not comment, help, document or whatever, and once they're doing that, they are uncontrollable. They can't be sacked because they're the only ones keeping the system…

well if you have 3 guys that are the wizards that can't be sacked, hire 3 contractors for a year long project to document things sufficiently that these guys become more sackable. Contractors of course have to be highly experienced as well, and well-remunerated, so maybe management doesn't want to go down that expensive avenue, which means it's a management problem.

Not to mention the years where they did not comment, help, document or whatever, and became uncontrollable sounds like a management problem over those years.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#67

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #66
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possibly not a management problem at the core? I mean, I know exactly what you mean about suits like to ignore the future, but I've worked with a few 'wizards' who, once they've got the job under their belt, use it to keep other people out. They'll not comment, help, document or whatever, and once they're doing that, they are uncontrollable. They can't be sacked because they're the only ones keeping the system…

well if you have 3 guys that are the wizards that can't be sacked, hire 3 contractors for a year long project to document things sufficiently that these guys become more sackable. Contractors of course have to be highly experienced as well, and well-remunerated, so maybe management doesn't want to go down that expensive avenue, which means it's a management problem. Not to mention the years where they did not comment…

Your first suggestion might work, but having been there I know obnoxious programmers can be very obstructive, and put up some major barriers to newbies. That said, I think yours is a good solution if it can be afforded.

Per your 2nd point about long-term management problems, no doubt of it at all, but sometimes the new (and sometimes good) management simply inherits what previous mismanagement left behind.

Also perhaps you underestimate the power that programmers in well-bedded-in positions have. They can outright ignore management orders - experience speaking.

But a good post nonetheless, thanks.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#68

Post by number6 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #63
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?

>> I don't want to sound condescending but why can't these systems be rewritten in a modern language? Cobol was a modern language 50 years ago. Python will be an ancient language 50 years from now. What do we do? Keep rewriting everything every 50 years? And those ancient Cobol codebases actually have a big advantage: they've been maintained for so long that all the major bugs have been virtually eliminated. Creating…

Thanks for your comment, that's something I can relate.

Somehow I think C or C++ wouldn't run into the same problem while I can see this happen to python.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#69

Post by jazzyjackson »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #50
altitudinous wrote: post #29

My first serious computer job (early 1990's) was COBOL. I last used it in 1997, then moved on to Oracle PL/SQL, Java, Oracle's Java software stacks and now iOS ObjC/Swift. Now I'm 52 years old. I have my own apps now on the store, don't need the money but I am looking for a new challenge - something a bit more social than working for myself. I think I'll do this COBOL refresher. Only issue is I'm in Australia but I s…

Serious question, why do you use COBOL and "looking for a new challenge" in the same post? I found it a trivial language with a syntax that goes on for pages. It's entirely uninteresting. The only challenge is understanding any business requirements, and that's not a language thing.

It's interesting to me that systems could be written that function correctly once they go live and don't have to be taken offline for decades... the architecture, not the language

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#70

Post by alxtt »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #67
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well if you have 3 guys that are the wizards that can't be sacked, hire 3 contractors for a year long project to document things sufficiently that these guys become more sackable. Contractors of course have to be highly experienced as well, and well-remunerated, so maybe management doesn't want to go down that expensive avenue, which means it's a management problem. Not to mention the years where they did not comment…

Your first suggestion might work, but having been there I know obnoxious programmers can be very obstructive, and put up some major barriers to newbies. That said, I think yours is a good solution if it can be afforded. Per your 2nd point about long-term management problems, no doubt of it at all, but sometimes the new (and sometimes good) management simply inherits what previous mismanagement left behind. Also perha…

The other side of the coin is that new hires can be very obstructive. 80% of new hires here are relentless politicians who snitch to management that they are "underappreciated" while making one idiotic suggestion after the next to show their relevance.

In reality they cannot do anything, so they scheme to get rid of people who can. During the battle no useful work is being done.

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