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IBM will offer free COBOL training

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Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#111

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

metreo wrote: post #32
safgasCVS wrote: post #19

What other languages can we expect to see a similar surge in demand? FORTRAN? In the data analysis space my bet is on SAS

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…

There's Fortran inside your numpy/R installation doing the heavy lifting.

Not sure if there's real demand for paid Fortran programmers, but it's certainly not a dead language.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#112

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

Kye wrote: post #104
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention GOTO. If your one of the people who hyperventilates when you see a goto because you learned that it was considered harmful in programmer school then Cobol might not be for you. ;) You might be surprised about the comments though - depending on the age of the codebase. Mainframes were rented back in the day, you paid by resources consumed, terminal time was precious, and mainframes were often turned off…

I used to have an IBM flowcharting template I inherited. I mostly used it to draw shapes and didn't appreciate what it meant to have a standard you could make tools like that for. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nma...

Awesome! I used to have one of those templates, unfortunately it got lost in a move. Surprisingly you can buy similar templates on Amazon but I’ve not seen one used in decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Rapidesign-Computer-Flowchart-Templat...

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#113

Post by nosborn »

walshemj wrote: post #102
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention GOTO. If your one of the people who hyperventilates when you see a goto because you learned that it was considered harmful in programmer school then Cobol might not be for you. ;) You might be surprised about the comments though - depending on the age of the codebase. Mainframes were rented back in the day, you paid by resources consumed, terminal time was precious, and mainframes were often turned off…

I doubt that mainframes where turned on and off every day even later with super mini's we left them powered up

Every mainframe I worked on until the mid-80s was turned on by the first person to arrive in the morning and turned off by the last to leave in the evening.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#114

Post by cmiles74 »

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 think it would make a lot more sense to pay COBOL developers at the same rate as other software developers. The era where we had analysts writing psuedo-code so clear that it could simply be "coded" into COBOL is over, if it ever really existed in the first place. In addition, paying COBOL developers more is so obviously less expensive than trying to completely re-write all of that legacy code.

It is likely true that many people would not be excited to learn COBOL. That said, I do think there would be a good amount of developers, perhaps new to the field, that would be willing to write the code in return for a fair wage and the work experience. But this attitude that COBOL code is somehow worth less than JavaScript code needs to be worked out of the system. It simply is not true and it is clearly doing harm.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#115

Post by vsareto »

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…

Reverse engineers can manage to stare at assembly and figure things out. Every programmer can learn the skills of staring at really fucked up representations of logic and eventually figure things out. It's definitely slower of course.

Now is definitely not the time for a rewrite. As much of a trap this seems to be, it's actually the best move given the circumstances.

I may actually take IBM up on this since my father was a COBOL programmer, but I wouldn't plan to make a career of it.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#117

Post by bdavis__ »

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 the amount of code is extreme. and without a deep testing regime, a dangerous journey. so, we keep on keeping on. the same way.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#118

Post by lotsofpulp »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #48
brnt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just finished a contract with a hospital that built a lot of stuff in house in the 80ies based on a C (still pre C89 in many places) and Delphi/Pascal. The problem is indeed volume (over 10MLoC), two or three wizards supporting it all, but firmly coding like it's '83. No training of newcomers whatsoever, and thus really no way to contribute. If you manage to get some support, it will be once a year and in the form of…

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…

Management that allows one or a few persons to become that indispensable is a management problem.

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#119

Post by bdavis__ »

Endlessly wrote: post #4

Here is the official description & link to the course: “Open Source COBOL Training – a brand new open source course designed to teach COBOL to beginners and refresh experienced professionals. IBM worked with clients and an institute of higher education to develop an in-depth COBOL Programming with VSCode course that will be available next week on the public domain at no charge to anyone. This curriculum will be made…

COBOL and VS Code. How can an editor for those that can't understand vi be mentioned in a press release?

Re: IBM will offer free COBOL training

#120

Post by soneil »

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?

The problem with these systems is rarely the language itself. It's that they're spaghetti monoliths - with decades of growth and tangles. And it's really difficult to overstate monolith here - government and finance are often the Himalayan examples, monoliths on tectonic scales.

The closest that modern design patterns come to these systems, is using them as the nightmarish example that justifies why modern practices exist.

It's rarely actually a technological problem. It's scale, scope, documentation, budget and motivation. You have to take Mount Everest, and carve it into 2 million separate boulders. Document every single one of them. Paint some of them. Replace some of them with stronger materials. If any of them move, you failed. If any snow is disturbed, you failed. If the climbers even notice this is happening, or has happened, you've failed. And on top of this herculean feat, the person paying for it needs to understand that despite the insane cost of this endeavour, he's probably not going to see a single benefit - but his successor in 10-20 years will. But if you fail, he's going to feel that hard and fast.

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