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IBM will offer free COBOL training

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Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#121

Post by m0xte »

zhte415 wrote: post #89
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…

I worked with a guy like this. He bragged he was the only one that knew the entire legacy codebase and he only shared parts with colleagues on his pretty sizable team to ensure he had a job and fat salary for life. The the multinational decides a change in direction and fired the entire office, relocating it for regional diversification (this was not offshoring, spreading the work out across multiple teams). This was…

That smells familiar. I worked with one of those wizards and he designed everything to keep him the job. That was until he rode a motorbike into the side of a car at 100mph and someone else (me) inherited it. I had to start again because it was that impenetrable. Consequentially it turned out it didn't do a lot and I'd rewritten the bulk of it in ASP/SQL Server at the time in a couple of weeks reducing the cost of the entire platform to an hour or two a week rather than an entire "tier B" (whatever that was but I was told it was a lot and was tier F myself) salary. When I quit it took a few hours to hand over to the next guy.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#122

Post by lowercased »

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…

> What do we do? Keep rewriting everything every 50 years?

Yes, or sooner.

And you keep the 'institutional knowledge' externalized in documents, and you use testing tools and use virtualized systems and what not (virtual systems were available to consumers even 20 years ago - this is not that new).

"Upgrade" or "rewrite" every 10-15 years. This should just be a cost of maintenance. I'm at the point where I've had PHP code running on systems for 15+ years (had a call from someone in 2017 about software started in 2002 and last touched in 2004). There's a 'on the public internet' distinction with web apps vs internal bank systems, for example, agreed, but it doesn't remove the need for upgrading old systems. Doing it on your own schedule, on your own terms, vs having to deal with systems in crisis, is where the benefit is.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#123

Post by ProZsolt »

metreo wrote: post #28

Do you really want to end up in a situation where you're in a position of maintaining someone else's ancient codebase? I guarantee you this is not a path to anywhere but misery.

I really like working with ancient codebases. There is no more satisfying thing than deleting 10k+ line of spaghetti code. Yes, you have to spend days or even weeks to figure out how it works. Hunt down edge cases, bugs. If you like playing detective you will like it.

I rather work on a huge legacy codebase than rewrite the same CRUD app in the JS flavor of the week.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#124

Post by [deleted] »

atoav wrote: post #31
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…

[deleted]

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#125

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

lowercased wrote: post #93
alxtt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

not that that doesn't happen, but in the context of the thread here, I imagine it wouldn't happen (or be more rare). You're needing to hire senior COBOL experts, and the 'senior' part is where the sort of behavior you're describing doesn't happen as much. Usually it's a mixture of confidence in your own ability, a dislike of politics, and an assurance that you can get work someplace else if/when you decide to leave.…

I'd like to back up what you say because I wasn't clear enough in my first post - I've known a few people like that, a very few. Most are good and do their best. Despite the impression, idiots as I described are very much a minority.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#126

Post by erynvorn »

Young COBOL specialists are being fired here and there. They can't find a job. They can't "volunteer" either they need to get paid at the end of the day.

I see Fiserv firing all their 3-6 years COBOL juniors (last in, first out.) They retain only the most expensive 15-25 years pros.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#127

Post by SuperPaintMan »

lokedhs wrote: post #64
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

You can submit jobs to JES2 from USS with a shell script. Easiest way I found was to fuse-mount a working directory, edit everything with VSCode/Vim With COBOL Extensions and have two shells, one constantly reading the output data file and another for submitting job cards.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#128

Post by lame88 »

"Why? Because coding a percentage in COBOL would take an estimated five months."

Five months to code a percentage, or five months to add the calculation, integrate that data point with other systems (does this need to be shown as its own field on any unemployment forms or reports? etc.), test it to the point where it has been demonstrated stable enough to be included in a critical system, and then deliver this change?

I don't know the first thing about COBOL but the fact that government is (for good reasons) slow to move, the stability needed in critical things like unemployment processing, and all the other things that go into "coding a percentage", explain that timeline a hell of a lot more than what language was used.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#129

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

bdavis__ wrote: post #117
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 propose that most of the code written in the old days, in COBOL in particular, was not done by computer scientists. There were many lanes for learning COBOL, and they included community colleges and industry training courses. The amount of "computer science / software engineering" concepts that were widely known (or even possible) in those days was very limited. 're-engineering' the code is a valid operation, but t…

This is true. Back in the day, COBOL was marketed to businiess people as an easy to learn code to just get stuff done. Serious programming was done with FORTRAN.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#130

Post by charlesap »

metreo wrote: post #38
metreo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work at a place that writes new Fortran code today. Also c++, Python, Julia. Scientists will choose the least impedance mismatch to a library, some needed data set, or their brain.
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