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GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

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Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#71

Post by the_only_law »

hansor wrote: post #62

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business with Cobol on Z/OS. Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java.

I’ve always heard COBOL devs referred to as either highly paid consultants keeping critical applications alive for corporations or wage slaves maintaining a painful app for below average pay.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#72

Post by the_only_law »

enthd wrote: post #67

Ah COBOL, oddly enough I started my first dev job in COBOL in the banking industry(I'm in my 30s and started my professional coding career in my 20s), I have mixed feelings about it...it's a weird language but it has it's place, I wouldn't advise anyone to jump into a COBOL career path unless you are doing it for a job and a job alone.

I would kill to get a personal mainframe though. Read a story some time ago about some guy who snagged one from a government auction. Sadly they never have anything cool when I look.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#73

Post by rhabarba »

the_only_law wrote: post #72
enthd wrote: post #67

Ah COBOL, oddly enough I started my first dev job in COBOL in the banking industry(I'm in my 30s and started my professional coding career in my 20s), I have mixed feelings about it...it's a weird language but it has it's place, I wouldn't advise anyone to jump into a COBOL career path unless you are doing it for a job and a job alone.

I would kill to get a personal mainframe though. Read a story some time ago about some guy who snagged one from a government auction. Sadly they never have anything cool when I look.

Buy one. IBM still produces them.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#74

Post by ironmagma »

roel_v wrote: post #34
hackbinary wrote: post #9

COBOL, Assembler, and FORTRAN are actually kind of cool.

Having spent much of my time in Fortan 90 the last couple of months - I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on this one. You know all these people saying "when will I ever have to write mu own hash table?" Well, when you start working in Fortran.

There are hashtable implementations for Fortran such as in FLIBS.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#75

Post by johannes1234321 »

rhabarba wrote: post #25
johannes1234321 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have a career in large corporations keeping a decades old codebase alive it can be a good way, which might be saner than many startups. If you however want to build up something new and put your heart into it and revolutionize the world it probably isn't.

Revolutionizing the world with COBOL? Game’s on!

Well, there is the chance of enabling creative new insurance or banking products, if you cna bend the legacy in interesting ways. The chance is technically there, if management allows is the other question ;)

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#76

Post by driminicus »

herodotus wrote: post #69

My first job, after graduating, was for Control Data Corporation. I was called a Systems Analyst, but what I did was write a lot of Cobol code. Many years later, I wrote a paper about a novel data structure that could be used for what is called "The Balance Line Algorithm". I illustrated the use of this data structure with some Cobol. That was the last time I even thought about Cobol until I came across a citation to…

Sounds like high praise to me

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#77

Post by rhabarba »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #75
rhabarba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revolutionizing the world with COBOL? Game’s on!

Well, there is the chance of enabling creative new insurance or banking products, if you cna bend the legacy in interesting ways. The chance is technically there, if management allows is the other question ;)

Depends on the age of the managers, I guess...

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#78

Post by mrweasel »

mprev wrote: post #70
hansor wrote: post #62

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business with Cobol on Z/OS. Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java.

30k in Swedish krone?

I doubt that very many Swedes in IT works for less than 30.000SEK, so I would assume USD.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#79

Post by bencollier49 »

herodotus wrote: post #69

My first job, after graduating, was for Control Data Corporation. I was called a Systems Analyst, but what I did was write a lot of Cobol code. Many years later, I wrote a paper about a novel data structure that could be used for what is called "The Balance Line Algorithm". I illustrated the use of this data structure with some Cobol. That was the last time I even thought about Cobol until I came across a citation to…

In actual fact the data structure format in COBOL is rather clever. I'd like to have access to that in Java when dealing with data formats like ASN1.

Re: GnuCOBOL 3.1.1

#80

Post by [deleted] »

hansor wrote: post #62

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business with Cobol on Z/OS. Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java.

[deleted]
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