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New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system

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

#161

Post by KhoomeiK »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #147
neaanopri wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

Problem is, that's how they get away with everything. They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess. Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's…

Getting Atlas Shrugged vibes. Lots of parallels with this situation actually.

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

#162

Post by raverbashing »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #147
neaanopri wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

Problem is, that's how they get away with everything. They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess. Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's…

Yes, don't forget there will also be some deniers calling it a fraud afterwards: https://twitter.com/TheKouk/status/1211123181051768832

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

#163

Post by TAForObvReasons »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #147
neaanopri wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

Problem is, that's how they get away with everything. They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess. Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's…

This is honestly a terrible take. NJ did try to modernize the benefits system in 2007, awarding the contract to a company that is now owned by HP. News article: https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/nj_ends_118_million_cont...

EDIT: surprised at the downvotes. Parent asserted:

> we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back.

And the historical record showed that NJ made that realization at least before 2007 (which is when the contract was awarded)

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

#164

Post by pjc50 »

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…

Like Gibson's remark about the future already being here but not evenly distributed, the collapse is already happening but unevenly distributed.

Puerto Rico was without electricity for months. Some parts of the West will recover from the economic effect of the pandemic quickly. Others won't, without help from the center.

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

#165

Post by eru »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #157
neaanopri wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

They'll change their tune when they won't be able to find anyone. The free market is as honest as it gets. If you underpay and undertreat your employees, they will seek an alternative. It is simple opportunity cost.

It will probably not be all or nothing.

They'll probably find a few people who will give it a go. The result will probably be delays and failure. Business as usual.

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

#166

Post by skissane »

DrScump wrote: post #132
dbcurtis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> JCL is just another scripting language

One feature of JCL which I think is cool, is that whereas on Unix processes inherit file descriptors which are numeric only (and hence few applications know what to do with anything other than FDs 0-2), in JCL you instead have DDNAMEs which are 1 to 8 characters. I think, if Unix had alphabetic names for inherited streams rather than just numbers, you might see more Unix programs supporting more than three inherited streams.

Another feature I think is cool is catalogs. A database mapping dataset names (file paths basically) to the filesystem volume (disk or tape) on which the file lives. You can move a file to another disk or to tape without changing its name/path.

(Strictly speaking both of these are features of the MVS operating system as a whole, not just JCL per se, but JCL is one of the main interfaces to them.)

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

#167

Post by DeathArrow »

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…

Looks like they want a programmer to do the job of an entire IT department.

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

#168

Post by DonHopkins »

Zenst wrote: post #62
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…

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.

Or Cobol Woman! ;) Cobol was created by Admiral Grace Hopper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/cobol-forever-1a49f7d28a39

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

#169

Post by DonHopkins »

agildehaus wrote: post #155
DrScump wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That film's horrible misrepresentation of UNIX almost ruined it for me.

How exactly? Versus something like CSI, Jurassic Park got a lot of things right. The computers used were real SGI SPARCStations and they had a bunch of Thinking Machines CM-5s for gene sequencing in the background shots. I believe all of the on-screen shots were done with real Irix software (including the scene where they locked the doors, which was done using a real IRIX file manager called "fsn"). Sure it was given…

Sun made SPARCstations, not SGI, who used MIPS, not SPARC, and just called them workstations. Then there was the SGI Indy, which was an SGI Indigo without the go. ;)

The 3d desktop file system navigator software running on the SGI workstation was actually a thing that SGI shipped, by Joel Sherrill , called SGI Fusion, or FSN!

Original URL of binary distribution:

ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/fsn/fsn.tar.Z

Now archived at:

ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/sgi/bin/fsn.tar.Z

https://github.com/jdm7dv/3d-file-system-navigator/blob/mast...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)

>File System Navigator (fsn; pronounced "fusion") is an experimental application to view a file system in 3D, made by SGI for IRIX systems.

>Even though it was never developed to a fully functional file manager, it gained some fame after appearing in the movie Jurassic Park in 1993. In a scene in the film, the character Lex Murphy, played by Ariana Richards, finds a computer displaying the interface. She exclaims "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" and proceeds to restart the building's access control system, locking the control room's doors. After the release of the film, some perceived the visualization as an example of media misrepresentation of computers, citing the computer game-like display as being an unrealistic Hollywood mockup.

FSN – the IRIX 3D file system tool from Jurassic Park

http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool...

SGI Fusion - FSN 3d File System Navigator

SGI File System Navigator, otherwise known as Fusion. Running on IRIX 6.5 on an Octane. If you have an SGI, a binary of this program is available at ftp.sgi.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ

It's a unix system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxIPcbmo1_U

"Indigo without the go." -Mark Hughes (?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEcw_oTKTa0?t=6m8s

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341455

Software Usability II

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassi...

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

#170

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

DonHopkins wrote: post #168
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.

Or Cobol Woman! ;) Cobol was created by Admiral Grace Hopper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://medium.com/@donhopkins/cobol-forever-1a49f7d28a39

I am pretty sure that individual was referring to themselves with that term.
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