New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system • Hacker News Board

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#121

Post by d3ad1ysp0rk » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

meow1032 wrote: post #94

_bxg1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over-state resume requirements.

As someone who works with a lot of state IT people, if they don't know how to hire programmers, they probably don't know how to manage programmers. In a bureaucracy, if the administrators are making these kinds of unrealistic hiring demands in a crisis, it probably means that the administrators outrank all programmers and don't trust them to make their own decisions. This is not an environment to work in.

I would normally agree, but emergencies can create opportunities for improvements in the process. See healthcare.gov for example.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#122

Post by OGWhales » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

vaidhy wrote: post #13

I used to work on mainframe COBOL during the Y2K times. While the language is easy to pick up and the OS specific things are not too hard, the style of programming can lead to issues. Typically, shared data structures are often stored in separate files called copybooks and they can be hard to track down. Most of the code is not in any source control repositories which means no one knows which is the actual deployed v…

Usually you just compile the code to get the copy books. Ezpz. But yes its common practice in my office to carry a thicc black binder around for each companies’ copy book.

I’m newer to the mainframe industry but not that new and I’ve never seen a place that doesn’t have a source control repository. In fact, it’s required by law in every company I’ve worked for.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#123

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

LeoTinnitus wrote: post #105

Zenst wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tick the 10+ years COBOL box nicely, though that was 30+ years ago and with that, somebody with 1-3 years COBOL would be more effective than somebody as myself. Still, in an era of movie superheroes, who knew that having 10+ years upon your CV would enable you to go, step aside good citizens, for I shall save you. COBOL man to the rescue.

Everytime I see COBOL, I always think of Newman from Jurassic Park and imagine that is a stereotypical COBOL programmer haha! If you see any bosses with a weird scarf, back away cause they may spit corona-acid in your face!

Newman is some sort of Pascal programmer https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/28030/source-code...

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#124

Post by rwallace » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

downvoteme1 wrote: post #84

thaumaturgy wrote: post #32

I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's bee…

Don’t be surprised if this position then goes to an H1B contractor though. If enough anericans who have this knowledge do not apply because they - Hate the tech - Can’t provide their feedback to improve the system - Don’t like the salary offered even if’s greater than their current unemployment income, then is it for an offshore company to come in and fill that gap.

I don't think the point is that Americans should consider themselves too good for the COBOL jobs. The point is that the organization has stated that it will refuse to hire many people who would be willing and able to do the jobs.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#125

Post by AllanHoustonSt » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

downvoteme1 wrote: post #84

thaumaturgy wrote: post #32

I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's bee…

Don’t be surprised if this position then goes to an H1B contractor though. If enough anericans who have this knowledge do not apply because they - Hate the tech - Can’t provide their feedback to improve the system - Don’t like the salary offered even if’s greater than their current unemployment income, then is it for an offshore company to come in and fill that gap.

Which popular H1B source countries teach COBOL? I feel like the advent of cheap offshore programming came well after the decline of COBOL. Though my sense of history can very well be off.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#126

Post by AmericanChopper » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

tareqak wrote: post #68

This issue highlights one of my main fears about a pandemic such as COVID-19: if enough people with the necessary amount of knowledge to maintain necessary infrastructure die without sufficiently and timely trained replacements, then civilization as we know it becomes one more step closer towards total irrecoverable collapse. The prevalence of COBOL and other older programming languages in many parts of the world's c…

For all of these large, old organisations that still use COBOL, the risk isn’t that they run out of COBOL engineers to hire. COBOL is a very simple programming language, it was designed to be as simple as SQL. SQL was designed to be so easy that non-programmer business analysts could use it, COBOL was designed to be the same thing, but for non-DB business logic. Though you could debate how successful either of them were.

The risk these organisations face is finding people capable of maintaining their particular decades old COBOL spaghetti. Which is really just an ordinary key person risk.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#127

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

dbcurtis wrote: post #70

thaumaturgy wrote: post #32

I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's bee…

> JCL ERROR IN OR NEAR CARD 1 COLUMN 1 0C7 ABEND ABORT CORE DUMP FOLLOWS: .... About the only other thing I remember is: //SYSIN DD * No. Thank. You.

[deleted]

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#128

Post by OGWhales » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

non-entity wrote: post #6

vikramkr wrote: post #4

How hard is cobol to pick up and learn at the level needed to contribute? I'm sure there are many no longer employed programmers in the tri state area that might be able to help

I imagine it's pretty difficult. I'm not a mainframe programmer, but from my understanding you not only have to understand the COBOL languages, but various mainframe environment parts like the OS, APIs, databases, etc.

If you are already a decent programmer then switching to cobol can be easy. Cobol still uses the same logic, just with less fancy tools available.

That other stuff really isn’t that hard. Most of it is copy and paste-able once someone explains it to you. It’s really easy. It could also likely be handled by someone else for a situation like this with new-comers simply writing cobol.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#129

Post by siruncledrew » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #45

thaumaturgy wrote: post #32

I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's bee…

Or they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over-state resume requirements.

Or maybe that’s their way of aiming high to land lower when that particular assortment of requirements isn’t yielding them any best-case options.

Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

#130

Post by freepor » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

ptx wrote: post #51

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did software engineering exist back then.

COBOL was created in 1959. The term software engineering was coined in the 1960s. So it existed for most of COBOL's lifetime.

The term teleportation was coined awhile back too.