The thing about the "average line of code" is that a line of COBOL rarely does much.
You can do a lot more with a line of Java and, of course, with a line of Perl or Python you can do very complex things.
COBOL – Still standing the test of time
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Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#22Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?
I think the field of tech is more segmented than many realize (in terms of culture, technology, even geography to an extent)
For example, I've got a decent-sized network and I've only ever met one person who works in government tech. And it wasn't through that network. But you can't tell me the government doesn't have legions of people working on its systems.
Even talking with this friend about work is like speaking another language. He builds, tests, and manages huge digital systems, but all of it is done using this product called Microsoft Dynamics, which I'd never even heard of. He doesn't really write any code, but the medium he works in is as complex and powerful as a programming language ecosystem. Yet there's almost no crossover between the jobs each of us might apply for. It's like an uncanny, alternate universe, coexisting with the one I live in. I think there are many such universes and it's entirely possible to go through your career without ever meeting someone from one of the others.
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#23Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?
I wrote a lot of COBOL "back in the day" (the 80's) and I don't think it would take me much effort to get back up to speed. So I think I can fairly count myself as a COBOL programmer!
That being said, I like languages that came later much more, and absolutely would not choose to create a project today using it. I also wrote a lot of Pascal in the 80's, then moved to C/C++ and Python. Python is the language I've used the most in the 2000's, but now I'm studying Typescript, and think that is a perfectly fine language which I plan to use professionally. I've also studied OCaml and Rust and would absolutely choose the latter now for anything where efficiency was a prime requirement.
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#24This article is from 2012, 9 years old. Thing might have changed a lot after that.
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#25I've always thought that the reason COBOL is still "popular" is that it became an entrenched technology many years ago, and the cost of replacement is high enough (and it works fine doing what it's doing) that no one wants to invest the time and money to replace it's usage. This quote made me pause though, "COBOL remains the preferred choice for systems where application quality and operating cost remain important co…
I spent ~7 years or so at one of the large credit card companies. The adage "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" was very prevalent there, and anything that even hinted at touching the core payment processing code was scrutinized heavily and usually avoided entirely. At the time, the cost of an outage was estimated in the $100K's per minute, and is likely significantly higher now. When I moved away from FinServ, I found…
As someone who was recruited to a financial firm a year ago to execute a modernization effort, I think the difference is due to (simplified) two types of firms: Big ones with huge moats often protected by regulators and profitability, and ones that are insecure. There is a pretty big population of companies that are at huge risk of being disrupted in the best sense of that term, and that's why they need to modernize. Many of these outdated core systems don't have modern capabilities, such as being desktop apps that can't integrate with the web or provide/use APIs without heavy refactoring anyway.
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#26If a system is not really changed a lot, if the attitude is to keep what is currently working and avoid risk of anything breaking through change, then I ask: What is that "test of time"? What is it, that needs to be stood here? If nothing new is introduced to the system, then most likely it would still work in thousands of years. That is no achievement in itself. All deterministic software does this.
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#27Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?
My job involves a lot of projects with IBM i and Z so I meet a lot of them. It's pretty much the "greybeards" you'd expect, but also surprisingly there's a LOT of older women in these roles. Like, proportionally way more than an in open systems world in my experience. I've always wondered why that is, I have heard that programming used to be considered a "woman's job" so maybe that's it.
I worked at an investment bank in the 1990s. Their programming staff (and IT staff in general) was roughly half female. I think it's more common in companies where IT is a supporting function and not the core business. By contrast, the tech companies I've worked at have all been almost entirely male.
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#28Has anyone ever actually met a COBOL programmer? It seems like the teachers tale of someone cracking their head open while swinging on their chair - presumably they exist but there can't be that many of them?
I worked with some at a bank (of course). Nowadays a "mainframe" is just a 1U server and it's incredible how some old names in IT can still charge enormous fees for some very old software.
> Nowadays a "mainframe" is just a 1U server
No it isn't. But I grant that there are probably people who incorrectly call their 1U servers "mainframes".
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#29I started my career with a first job in 2009 (not long time ago!) as a COBOL/JCL programmer (and went on to do TELON programming later) for one of the biggest retailer in the country.
The systems that managed the forecasting for replenishable and non-replinshable products, markdowns (i.e., discounts) on products in the stores, stock warehouse etc. across the country was completely built on COBOL/JCL+DB2 stack combined with TELON online screens for business to manage the solution/system.
This system practically worked round the clock with hardly any downtime, and in the peak season (like Christmas when the sales/transactions were at it's high) too worked without any major issues. I'm sure IBM still earns a big chunk of revenue from mainframes from these big customers.
I remember an attempt was made to migrate some (if not all) to a new generation data analytics platform and it didn't go very well, so they just stuck with what they had.
One of the main reason I can think of is the the cost of this migration was too high (vs. the realised benefit) as the system just worked for the business and was quite resilient.
I since then jumped ship to the very technology they were trying to migrate too and have never looked back really. I think I can still work my way out of COBOL/JCL + TELON/CICS, perhaps I will forget them very soon :)
Re: COBOL – Still standing the test of time
#30I've always thought that the reason COBOL is still "popular" is that it became an entrenched technology many years ago, and the cost of replacement is high enough (and it works fine doing what it's doing) that no one wants to invest the time and money to replace it's usage. This quote made me pause though, "COBOL remains the preferred choice for systems where application quality and operating cost remain important co…
I manage some ColdFusion apps still going strong. >the cost of replacement is high enough (and it works fine doing what it's doing) that no one wants to invest the time and money to replace it's usage That's pretty much what it is. They're not hard to manage as they are and ... doing their thing.
Here's one I worked on over a decade ago:
It's a little clunky, but still going strong!
Honestly, I've found ColdFusion is a great solution for a lot of web development problems. It tends to break down with very complex apps, but for a lot of simple-to-mid comexity apps CF is great!