They could move to ReactJS... Move fast and break things
New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
131–140 of 309 posts
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#132I 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.
If you get an S0C7, your JCL is probably fine (else you wouldn't get far enough to get a data exception).
JCL is just another scripting language. I found it fun. I did all the JCL for my group's production jobs and commented the hell out of the esoteric issues to help Operations triage things. A small, well-planned effort prevented a crapload of, well, crap.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#133Their own search for Cobol on their own site returns "Your search did not match any answers we have" - are they serious?
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine making even a minor change to the COBOL code. It's not likely to be very well structured or comprehensible. I'm guessing there would be a lot of global variables and strange database / file system interfaces. Very hard to do it without breaking something somewhere. Edit: per the thread starting with vaidhy's comment.
Just yesterday there was an exciting post about printing off pages of assembly and reverse engineering archaic encryption using a crayon. If you thought that was exciting I can't imagine hacking on archaic COBOL codebase could be much worse in terms of quality of tooling! There's also a much better chance you'll have a say in the replacement if you work on and understand the original.
Fun fact: the third-party dump formatting package we had in the 80s could show line by line what assembly code corresponded to each line of COBOL. I actually diagnosed a CAPEX optimizer bug that way once.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#135Wow, if they don’t have folks who can lead this redesign development project (SDLC? Ever seen a highly critical emergency project where the SDLC was not the first thing sacrificed in support of expediency?) 2nd is QA & testing. Their dates never change as slipping development dates are a given.
This thing sounds like something begging to come off the rails before it even starts (Governor begging for COBOL coders) while having degree requirements for that kind of legacy experience?
What’s the definition of a legacy system? Anything in production!
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#136I imagine the COBOL programmers are in the high-risk group for coronavirus.
Unless working in a Halon-protected, 50-degree, raised floor environment confers immunity. It's only fair.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about old COBOL systems is, the language isn't the problem. Snark aside, it isn't that bad. The major issue is the code written in it. Remember, a lot of COBOL code comes from a time before a lot of programming best practices were discovered. Structured programming-- as in, actually having function calls instead of just GOTO statements everywhere-- was a novel hoity-toity concept when COBOL first existed. R…
That, and I don't imagine there's any tests written for a lot of these systems. :(
One advantage of a legacy system is that you can create your own great test data just by making appropriate extracts of your existing legacy data.
Where I worked, original test data was sparse and incomplete, and it avoided edge conditions. I, on the other hand, loved breaking stuff.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They can just lie about experience can they not?
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#139I did COBOL for about 18 months in the Army in 1967-1968 on a RCA 501. Wonder if I would qualify. None of that other fancy stuff, though. Also RCA 301 assembly language.
Allan Sherman, the Weird Al Yankovic of his day, turned the tune from "Fascination" into "Automation" in 1963, a song about his RCA 503 sexually harrassing him:
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#140Earlier 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!
That film's horrible misrepresentation of UNIX almost ruined it for me.