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COBOL Leads Us Back to the Future (2015)

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Re: COBOL Leads Us Back to the Future (2015)

#21

Post by twic »

jbarham wrote: post #10
dmichulke wrote: post #8

What's the daily consulting fee range for COBOL? Would there be a monetary merit to learn it, relative to other "Enterprise Languages" such as Java or C#?

Most production COBOL programs run on IBM compatible mainframes so you'd also need to get a handle on developing in MVS aka "z/OS" and how to hack JCL config scripts--the horror! That's difficult to do without getting hands-on experience. As someone whose first job out of uni almost 20 years ago was in a mainframe environment, I have no desire whatsoever to go back to it and would strongly recommend against working i…

Also, nobody calls it the "mainframe". It's the "host environment". It took me a couple of weeks on my current project to work out why my new colleagues were so reluctant to modify the customer re-contact batch process - "oh, that's on the host environment!".

Re: COBOL Leads Us Back to the Future (2015)

#22

Post by muraiki »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #18
jrapdx3 wrote: post #4

A discussion I've often had, that old technologies never disappear altogether, there's always an interest, revivals inevitably occur especially among the younger generations to whom the old stuff is new. Not too long ago I overheard a conversation among a group of college-age artists chattering about the merits of silver-based vs. digital photography. Basically, in their eyes digital was old hat, the familiar way to…

Computing actually has a very chaotic evolution compared to other fields. Where most can be seen as linear progressions, computing is heavily prone to stasis and regressions. Revisiting ancestral ground in programming actually makes you think how little we've come, not how far.

Although my self-teaching of programming began in Python it ended up veering through Racket and Smalltalk. I almost regret learning Smalltalk after experiencing what a joy it is to program in. Writing a webapp in Seaside, with all of its great features for live inspection and debugging, and then experiencing Django and Node was an eye opener.

Re: COBOL Leads Us Back to the Future (2015)

#23

Post by acheron »

marktangotango wrote: post #5

>> The next reason is readability. COBOL is known as a "verbose" language, especially when it's compared to a very terse language like C++. From a debugging standpoint, COBOL can be like reading a novel: In fact, I'd almost bet that, with a few variables thrown in, you could get arbitrary chapters from Game of Thrones to compile. Of course, all your favorite functions would die depressing, lonely deaths, but still… I…

I was in college when the object-oriented COBOL standard was released -- my software engineering professor at the time mentioned it in class one day and made the (obvious) joke that it should have been called "ADD 1 TO COBOL."

Re: COBOL Leads Us Back to the Future (2015)

#24

Post by Luyt »

acheron wrote: post #23
marktangotango wrote: post #5

>> The next reason is readability. COBOL is known as a "verbose" language, especially when it's compared to a very terse language like C++. From a debugging standpoint, COBOL can be like reading a novel: In fact, I'd almost bet that, with a few variables thrown in, you could get arbitrary chapters from Game of Thrones to compile. Of course, all your favorite functions would die depressing, lonely deaths, but still… I…

I was in college when the object-oriented COBOL standard was released -- my software engineering professor at the time mentioned it in class one day and made the (obvious) joke that it should have been called "ADD 1 TO COBOL."

The next step is obviously 'functional COBOL'.
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