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GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

sourceforge.net

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Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#121

Post by watermelon59 »

speeder wrote: post #37
Minor49er wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, but why is COBOL the first language that you think about for this?

Because I already know: C, C++, Obj-C, C#, Php, Lua, x86 ASM, ARM ASM, Linoleum (some ASM-like esoteric languagE), BASIC (not VB), Java, Python, JS, MushCODE (it is derived from LISP), SQL and some application specific scripting languages. I started coding when I was 8, I am 32 now, and in my government-issued employer list, I had zero employers. My dad knows COBOL and MUMPS, and kept talking about how horrible they…

> government-issued employer list

Do you mind sharing where you live? That’s such an odd concept to me.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#123

Post by emidln »

rhabarba wrote: post #99
galoisgirl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> COBOL jobs are not particularly well-paying, and there are young people learning it, and no, they don't get awesome paychecks. Yup. All the articles on the shortage of COBOL programmers is actually companies whining that they can't find cheap labor. If they paid well, they'd have their pick of young and old.

Well, if they paid for COBOL courses, that is. COBOL still evolves.

If they paid well enough, your average working programmer would flip to COBOL for a pay raise. Once you've learned a few languages, you can solve problems in any language. It's just about having the manual and maybe an overview of available facilities so you don't have to read all the docs upfront. The syntax doesn't matter for data plumbing applications. COBOL is as good as BASIC as good as Java as good as Python etc. You might prefer writing Python (or Haskell, Clojure, Rust, C++, Go, Scala, Kotlin, whatever is en-vogue these days) because it is more concise, but if you can effectively hack in one language you can do it in COBOL too with a little effort.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#124

Post by cle »

nescioquid wrote: post #119
Jakobeha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it's the computer science equivalent of a plumber or janitor. The job doesn't sound particularly fun, but because of this it's high demand and great pay. It's a good job if you accept that work isn't fun, and you don't care about climbing the ladder, you're just looking for a decent, reliable income.

An alarming amount of software development, especially now, is little more than plugging part A into part B. The major trend of software development has been to increase the degree of similarity between software developers and plumbers.

That kind of reductionist argument can be made for any kind of software development...we're all just plumbing bits around at the end of the day. If you're a web dev, you're plugging web tech, if you're a backend dev it's network protocols and storage tech, if you're a kernel dev it's instruction sets and memory buffers.

As we build tools to make that plumbing easier for certain use cases, we might move around in the hierarchy to plug different things together, but I don't think anything has fundamentally changed in an alarming way. We're still just moving bits around!

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#125

Post by fiftyacorn »

nonamenoslogan wrote: post #110

I've spent the last three years translating COBOL programs off of an HP3000 in to to SQL-backended web-apps and can say as a non-Programmer who was given a pile of COBOL source to decompile, I like its simplicity and ease of readability. Most of the code is from the 80's or 90's but is well commented and easy to work with and understand. Speaking of, most of this code still works or was in use until 2-3 years ago--on…

The importance of the comments in COBOL reminds me of a developer I worked with who was famous for removing comments to 'tidy up the code'

The other developers then spent time readding the comments

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#126

Post by kyting »

RM Cobol, Nevada Cobol, Cobol-80..., what a good old days to use those Cobol compilers back on early 90s. old soldiers never die but fade away.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#127

Post by ab_testing »

Misteur-Z wrote: post #87
hansor wrote: post #62

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business with Cobol on Z/OS. Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java.

Until some COBOL developer publishes his pay slip, I will stick to reality, top IT salaries are at tech giants. From personal experience: BNP Paribas is one of the biggest bank in the world, top 5 if you exclude Chinese state owned ones, and they pay mainframe related jobs like shit. Being young, smart and with a whole career ahead, you have no future working has a COBOL developer, no one should spend his life pickin…

That is true, but you have to understand that not everybody is FAANG material. The top 5-15 tech companies receive hundreds of thousands of resumes every year of which less than 1% are selected. Also not everybody is interested in moving in to the tech hubs. There is still lot of work in legacy code - COBOL, Oracle and other legacy systems.

Even in newer languages like Java, there is lot of work that is mostly application maintenance and adding new features to existing decade old applications. It is not bad work.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#128

Post by nonesuchluck »

the_only_law wrote: post #93
GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #90

Any stories from production users of GnuCOBOL?

I’m curious too, my understanding is that 90% of COBOL work is done in older mainframes (or ported from older mainframes to newer ones) and likely uses whatever IBM compilers. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of GnuCOBOL being used outside of learning.

In my (very limited) z/OS experience, COBOL by itself is necessary but not nearly sufficient. COBOL code is used inside a framework of highly proprietary software and system services:

- DB2 (database is builtin to the mainframe)

- GDG (Generation Data Groups, versioned file system)

- ACL (IBM's original access control lists)

- JCL (automation, parameters, logging)

- SyncSort (data sorting, joining)

- various CA Technologies products

- etc!

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#129

Post by skulk »

nescioquid wrote: post #119
Jakobeha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it's the computer science equivalent of a plumber or janitor. The job doesn't sound particularly fun, but because of this it's high demand and great pay. It's a good job if you accept that work isn't fun, and you don't care about climbing the ladder, you're just looking for a decent, reliable income.

An alarming amount of software development, especially now, is little more than plugging part A into part B. The major trend of software development has been to increase the degree of similarity between software developers and plumbers.

So if you're a plumber and you're looking at two parts that don't connect but need to, you're pretty much SOL; you can't fabricate an adapter on the spot. Now, if you're a software engineer and you find yourself in a similar situation, you're expected to "fabricate the adapter." This is why the plumber analogy is fundamentally flawed.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#130

Post by galoisgirl »

necheffa wrote: post #84
hansor wrote: post #62

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business with Cobol on Z/OS. Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java.

I was forced to take a COBAL & z/OS course during college. And I was pretty good at it. Local bank wanted to make sure it had a steady supply of COBAL programmers. I hate COBAL a lot, and incidentally for many of the same reasons I hate Java.

You were pretty good at COBAL?
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