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COBOL – Still standing the test of time

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Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#31

Post by jl6 »

brundolf wrote: post #22
mhh__ wrote: post #12

Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?

I think the field of tech is more segmented than many realize (in terms of culture, technology, even geography to an extent) For example, I've got a decent-sized network and I've only ever met one person who works in government tech. And it wasn't through that network. But you can't tell me the government doesn't have legions of people working on its systems. Even talking with this friend about work is like speaking…

100%.

SAP is another ERP parallel universe, with its own language (ABAP), industry certification schemes, conferences, publications, culture...

These vendors specialize in solving the nexus of unfun problems that sit at the heart of every large organization (invoicing & expenses, accounting, payroll, budgeting & forecasting, financial statements…) and I believe them to be quite well insulated from the forces of open source and consumerization that have shaped the wider industry, because there is no consumer/hobbyist path to creating an alternative. Workday has come closest.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#32

Post by mhh__ »

brundolf wrote: post #22
mhh__ wrote: post #12

Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?

I think the field of tech is more segmented than many realize (in terms of culture, technology, even geography to an extent) For example, I've got a decent-sized network and I've only ever met one person who works in government tech. And it wasn't through that network. But you can't tell me the government doesn't have legions of people working on its systems. Even talking with this friend about work is like speaking…

One of things I really like about working on the D programming language is there sheer depth of characters I have met through it. We are all of a similar mould but we often come from very different backgrounds and paths.

For example: Hedge fund traders, Game Engine lead devs, scientists, profession esports players, aerospace engineers etc.

I particularly enjoy that D has given a bunch of smart people with no qualifications a venue to do what they love and get paid a small fortune doing it.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#33

Post by webnrrd2k »

mhh__ wrote: post #12

Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?

I knew a small department of cobol programmers. I worked one bay over from them in the mid 90's. They had a million+ line program that did the payroll for a major aerospace company. Honestly, it seemed like they had a pretty good job. Decent pay, decent benefits, decent hours, not much stress, no ageism, etc .. a great way to raise a family.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#34

Post by slivanes »

mhh__ wrote: post #12

Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?

I was one of the kids that cracked their head open rocking on a chair (in grade 2), and I have also programmed some COBOL although not commercially.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#35

Post by jimt1234 »

My mother spent much of her career as a COBOL programmer, dating back to the early 80s. She retired in 2015 and quickly got bored. I talked her into accepting part-time contract work, something to keep her busy. She got flooded by recruiters. They all told her the same story: "Big Corp" is nervous because a critical system runs COBOL and the staff that used to support it have all either retired or died. She decided against taking any contract work, telling me that once she retired, a switch flipped in her head - she could never go back to work, not for all the money in the world. Good for you, mom.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#36

Post by jcranmer »

Kaytaro wrote: post #19
mhh__ wrote: post #12

Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?

My job involves a lot of projects with IBM i and Z so I meet a lot of them. It's pretty much the "greybeards" you'd expect, but also surprisingly there's a LOT of older women in these roles. Like, proportionally way more than an in open systems world in my experience. I've always wondered why that is, I have heard that programming used to be considered a "woman's job" so maybe that's it.

From what I've been told, CS was a pretty balanced industry in terms of gender until the dot-com bubble, where it became very heavily male-skewed and hasn't recovered since.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#37

Post by IncRnd »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #26

If a system is not really changed a lot, if the attitude is to keep what is currently working and avoid risk of anything breaking through change, then I ask: What is that "test of time"? What is it, that needs to be stood here? If nothing new is introduced to the system, then most likely it would still work in thousands of years. That is no achievement in itself. All deterministic software does this.

> All deterministic software does this.

That stands to reason, yet much software is decomissioned or replaced every year. All of it deterministic software. Perhaps the software is expensive to maintain or use, doesn't adequately meet the needs of the business, is error-prone, or any one of a million reasons.

COBOL works at the heart of our industry and our society, despite COBOL being an ancient crufty language. In the same way that may of us never see our hearts or become heart surgeons, I may never meet a COBOL program or a COBOL programmer. I am still thankful they are there, and I recognize they serve a function other software likely would not.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#39

Post by bluGill »

loganfrederick wrote: post #25
haswell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent ~7 years or so at one of the large credit card companies. The adage "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" was very prevalent there, and anything that even hinted at touching the core payment processing code was scrutinized heavily and usually avoided entirely. At the time, the cost of an outage was estimated in the $100K's per minute, and is likely significantly higher now. When I moved away from FinServ, I found…

As someone who was recruited to a financial firm a year ago to execute a modernization effort, I think the difference is due to (simplified) two types of firms: Big ones with huge moats often protected by regulators and profitability, and ones that are insecure. There is a pretty big population of companies that are at huge risk of being disrupted in the best sense of that term, and that's why they need to modernize.…

Those big companies can be disrupted even faster if they break something though.

I'm not allowed to talk about it, but I know people in tier-2 support who were on an all night phone call with a big bank customer because if the computer wasn't up by morning the government would shut them down. (somewhat like the government did shut down some big banks in the 2008 crisis, but this was in the 1990s) At the start of the call the rep told them "We are pretty sure we know where the problem is and it isn't you, but we need you on the phone anyway just in case anyone has a question you are ready to answer." That is also why big companies have the million dollar support contracts: someone who can stay up all night and answer obscure questions.

Break things is a bad thing sometimes. I wish more of the move fast and break things companies would realize who annoying it is when they break something.

Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time

#40

Post by flomo »

Kaytaro wrote: post #19
mhh__ wrote: post #12

Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?

My job involves a lot of projects with IBM i and Z so I meet a lot of them. It's pretty much the "greybeards" you'd expect, but also surprisingly there's a LOT of older women in these roles. Like, proportionally way more than an in open systems world in my experience. I've always wondered why that is, I have heard that programming used to be considered a "woman's job" so maybe that's it.

I've read that IBM offered training programs to secretaries, so it was a good career path. And there was a stereotype that typing = woman's work.
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