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IBM will offer free COBOL training

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Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#71

Post by rbanffy »

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…

> if you have 3 guys that are the wizards that can't be sacked

Don't forget to also sack the management that looked the other way for years while this situation got where it is.

The zero asshole rule is non-negotiable.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#72

Post by rbanffy »

alxtt wrote: post #70
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you hire people like this you need to involve HR in better selecting who the org hires.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#73

Post by rbanffy »

augustk wrote: post #49
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…

I completely agree. I work with a large APL codebase and the main problem is not the language but the culture. Overly long expressions, one-letter variable names, gotos etc. make the code obfuscated.

And APL requires supreme discipline to prevent that from happening.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#74

Post by hordeallergy »

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…

Can the hardware not be upgraded? The article says the system is struggling with 400k people a week in new York. That's terribly slow. No overclocking?

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#75

Post by altitudinous »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #69
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This really, really interests me as well, and I've written my iOS apps the same way too. They have no server side, no real dependencies, all client based and fully automated internally - so as well as being fully contained they schedule required notifications etc into the future without my intervention. As long as the user runs the app once about every four months (which isn't an issue given they get many notifications during that four months) then the app will work for a very long time and bring in passive revenue. I consider this a holy grail of software.

I like pure solar powered calculators for the same reason. If you were to send one back in time it would continue to work and be useful without requiring intervention or dying.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#76

Post by hordeallergy »

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…

But you chose your profession, it wasn't assigned to you. You knew going in that either it's more about people, less about money if you're a nurse, or more money if you're a cardiac surgeon. Am I missing something?

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#77

Post by ptx »

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…

But every change to the Cobol codebase carries a risk of introducing new bugs (and presumably there are changes if they employ programmers to work on it) so if a newer language and platform makes changes easier and less risky it could still be a win.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#78

Post by Frost1x »

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.

Terrible code and terrible situations can be encountered in any language.

I had a project that gave all sorts of hints of stink that was Java based. Turns out that project involved integrating a system in a preexisting code base with tens of millions of lines of code. Limited documentation, so much abstraction Java was just a syntax of underlying conformity, the language was understanding the myriad of interdependent abstractions to accomplish the integration task. Documentation was incredibly limited given the scale of everything. Obviously, progress was painfully slow.

Java itself was not the problem, everything else was.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#79

Post by Shivetya »

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…

Other than constraints most of the issues you raise are just as likely to happen in modern languages as well. That comes down to how the team was managed. If anything I have found a lot of older code over documented. My difficulty when I had assist in migrating some old COBOL from CICS on a zSeries was understanding their file structure techniques. However that was easily remedied by understanding the task as hand so that the data was better represented on the new system.

Is it a trap? Well if you want a secure position in managing a code base and maybe eventually working with others to move it to a new platform I do not see how. I have been around enough new languages to know we are always going to run into code bases we just want nothing to do with but here we are.

The problem to me is you may land in a development shop that is not well maintained. The code has worked for so long that management outside the department just went assumed that everyone knew everything.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#80

Post by useful »

augustk wrote: post #49
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…

I completely agree. I work with a large APL codebase and the main problem is not the language but the culture. Overly long expressions, one-letter variable names, gotos etc. make the code obfuscated.

I was the team lead to rewrite a large APL codebase with a very small team as part of a much larger group that refused to change and I'll agree with this. Once we started documenting and building tests for the code that replaced APL it became clear that the complicated bits were easy to replace and the hard part was just man hours converting all the conditional logic.
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