Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 338 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#211

Post by Gaessaki »

Blackthorn wrote: post #74
Gaessaki wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young developer, do you know where and how I could go about getting into the COBOL industry? All the job listings seem to require a decade's worth of experience and lists expertise requirements in technologies that are proprietary and only available on a mainframe. COBOL on its own is not very hard to pick up, but I'm lost as to how to learn about the ancillary technologies. I'm not sure it's so much that nobody…

Why would you want to? There's a lot of smoke and noise made about how companies are desperate for COBOL developers because the old ones are retiring or dying blah blah blah, but I've never seen actual good salaries to back it up. And to add insult to injury, you're unlikely to be able to take the skills you've learned to your next job when you inevitably change jobs.

I suppose you're right. After going through some publicly available COBOL salaries in Canada, it seems the salaries for senior COBOL positions were about what I was able to ask for as a junior frontend developer (50-60$/h CAD). I think I would primarily consider a short stint for the heck of it. Maybe some short term contracts to see what it's like.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#212

Post by Gaessaki »

ctdonath wrote: post #62
Gaessaki wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young developer, do you know where and how I could go about getting into the COBOL industry? All the job listings seem to require a decade's worth of experience and lists expertise requirements in technologies that are proprietary and only available on a mainframe. COBOL on its own is not very hard to pick up, but I'm lost as to how to learn about the ancillary technologies. I'm not sure it's so much that nobody…

Contact the companies looking for COBOL coders. They're desperate, and will tell you exactly what you need to learn and probably pay for any training you need. Sure they'd prefer someone with a decade or five of experience, but seriously: COBOL coders are literally dying off at this point. 17 years ago was the last great hurrah for hiring & training COBOL developers, averting the "Y2K crisis" before calendars ticked…

Thanks for the advice. I guess it doesn't hurt me to give it a shot. The worse a recruiter can say to me is no. There seems to be no shortage of available COBOL positions at the major banks and telecoms where I live.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#213

Post by jsgrahamusxxx »

whitten wrote: post #56

I use a language originally called MUMPS, with the alternate name of M, which is the core language in Cache Object Script. I use it because it has features that are still not (really) included in more "modern" languages, because it is actively used in niche markets, and because I've used it for 34 years, so I have a lot of experience in it and tools written in it. It is incredibly terse, which allows for use in tight…

I have used MUMPS and derivatives for most of 35 years. Although my first company produced library information systems, most of the rest of my employers have used it for medical information systems, and for me that was mostly laboratory information systems. I knew one guy who ran a multi-user system for accounting off of a PC-AT!.

Spent 4 years using Fortran on a similar application. I sure missed MUMPS when having to compile programs and having errors caused by moving too many spaces into a variable!

I've also dinked around with Forth and Icon/Unicon, which I used to create small programs, one which created Valentine bingo cards and another which I used to transform COBOL screen descriptions from mainframe COBOL to a version which ran on PC's.

Sometimes I do wish for a change, but overall I've enjoyed my career.

Perhaps someone in the future will feel sorry for those who now work with C++/C#/Python/Ruby/etc.

It's provided for me for a long time. Can't complain. And provided me a way to solve problems and get paid for it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#215

Post by tomhoward »

In the past 18 months I've been back working with my father, building web and mobile apps to interact with hardware devices used for for data logging in agricultural and environmental research applications.

He's been building these kinds of devices for almost 35 years; he basically built his business (and supported our family) on the back of Motorola 6800-series microprocessors, and now uses the Freescale S08 series, which is descended directly from the 6800 (8-bit, von Neumann architecture).

To this day, he codes everything in Motorola/Freescale assembly language.

In his mind, it's the only way to keep his code adequately lean, efficient and maintainable. He's never been interested in C, as he thinks (from observing younger engineers using it) it just gets in the way.

And while the coding and debugging process seems very painstaking, the results are excellent. His devices sit out in the field taking hourly readings for months or years at a time, never failing and going for over 12 months per battery change.

Initially I thought he was just stuck in the past and that his refusal to embrace more modern hardware platforms and higher-level languages was a disadvantage.

But now I see how reliably and efficiently his devices work, and how inexpensive the components are (the microprocessors we use cost just a few dollars each), I see it as a huge advantage over our competitors, whose products are much more costly to manufacture, much more power-hungry and less reliable.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#217

Post by gtirloni »

deusu wrote: post #34

Pascal - still use it today. I started with Turbo Pascal 3.0, went through several versions of Borland Pascal (DOS and Windows), several versions of Delphi, and am now using FreePascal. I do most of my work on Linux nowadays. Pascal still gets everything done and after 20+ years I am really fluent in it. Did a little bit of Javascript with Node.js, also looked at Golang. While I did like some aspects of them, there w…

Pretty cool! Ever tried Modula-2 or -3?

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#218

Post by Spooky23 »

Gaessaki wrote: post #44
ctdonath wrote: post #11

There's lots of job openings out there for COBOL coders. Nobody wants to learn it, and those who know it are dying off.

As a young developer, do you know where and how I could go about getting into the COBOL industry? All the job listings seem to require a decade's worth of experience and lists expertise requirements in technologies that are proprietary and only available on a mainframe. COBOL on its own is not very hard to pick up, but I'm lost as to how to learn about the ancillary technologies. I'm not sure it's so much that nobody…

Don't. The job requirements are impossible on purpose because the posts are just there to justify getting guest visas.

You're better off going towards other enterprise technology stacks with more action and rewards.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#220

Post by wanda »

I started out with Perl and I still occasionally use it today. There's nothing I especially like about Perl that other languages cannot do just as well, or even better, but at the time I started using it, it seemed pretty powerful. It's still a formidable language and a viable means to build a solution for some problems—provided you don't have to collaborate with anyone. It's hard to find people willing to work with Perl these days, at least where I'm based.

I also help maintain some web applications built with VB.NET interfacing with IBM AS-400 and iSeries midrange servers. Which means some RPG coding as well. Can't say I enjoy that too much, pretty dull, but RPG is straightforward enough.

Basically, I work with VB.NET because it's not my code and there would be little advantage to converting it to be in C#. Very much a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation since the clients depend on uninterrupted service.

I mostly work with—and prefer to use—C# and JavaScript these days.

Post reply on HN