Do you speak COBOL?

[Rick Courtright]

Hi,

I caught a little blurb out there a few days ago that told how there's a demand for COBOL qualified computer programmers right now, partially because of the stimulus payments (I think they said both IRS and SS use it, as well as IBM.) The article went on to say it's been close to 60 years since the language was developed, and it's been in widespread use for well over 40 years, but is considered by many to be obsolete so few schools even teach it today. Funny thing is it's not so obsolete with a lot of government systems, ATM networks and other "heavy users": it's apparently very widely used to this day because of its speed and relative ruggedness. Which is good for crunching numbers, but dull and boring to a generation raised on writing video games.

Problem is, when they need to change something, it's getting harder and harder to find programmers to do that work. The last time this problem came up big time was with Y2K, and 20 years later, a lot of the guys who could help back then are gone now. One of the schools which still teaches it said a COBOL programmer right out of school can start at $25k to $30k more than those trained in other languages. One might think we should have learned something with Y2K!

So if you're one of those "old timers" and getting tired of sitting in the house, who knows: there may be a job to keep you busy for a short while!

Rick C

 

[Aqualung]

Not me...no speakee COBOL.

BASIC and FORTRAN were my thing...did half a year of each in high school.

Aqualung

 

[bogus bill]

I`m still working on english and I wuz born here.

 

[JFB]

my manuals went to the landfill last month

 

[Jeepnik]

Not me...no speakee COBOL.

BASIC and FORTRAN were my thing...did half a year of each in high school.

Aqualung

They had computers when you were in high school? Young un!

 

[coach]

I`m still working on english and I wuz born here.

:lol: I know the feeling. :wink:

 

[wwb]

FORTRAN for me..... still widely used in the engineering and scientific community. COBOL is for bean counters.

Back in '68 when I was working for big blue (IBM), the hot deal was PL1.... it was gonna be the universal programming language. Turned out to be the jack of all trades, but master of none, so it died and went away.

 

[Tensaw]

I wrote many COBOL programs in my day. My specialty was an IBM Assembler language programmer for 16 years in my early programming days. Once I invited Captain (at the time) Grace Hopper to speak at our local DPMA chapter. She accepted and flew down to be our speaker!!! She lead the team that developed COBOL, one of her many accomplishments. She retired as a Rear Admiral in the Navy.

 

[Rick Courtright]

She retired as a Rear Admiral in the Navy.

Hi,

I always liked the story about Adm. Hopper early in her career and the discovery of the first actual--not just a term--computer "bug." She even taped it into the log book for that machine! I'll bet she was an extremely interesting person to talk to.

While sources agree on the day, two different years are quoted: https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/09/18/the-very-first-computer-bug/

Rick C

 

[Colonialgirl]

Fortran IV was what I learned along with Basic and APL;
Looked at COBOL but it required TOO many IBM punch cards and I typed with two fingers at the time !!

 

[Pat-inCO]

Back in '68 when I was working for big blue (IBM), the hot deal was PL1....
it was gonna be the universal programming language. Turned out to be the
jack of all trades, but master of none, so it died and went away.

There is still a lot of it still in use, internally.

Don't forget PL/S . . . . some one's wet dream that made you include your flow chart
IN the code. Once management found out that you spent more time on building the
flow chart than the operational code, PL/S had a quiet and quick exit.

And don't forget REXX . . . for VM. Mike Collishaw did a really good job on that.
AND you can run it on Personal Computers.

.
.
.
Did someone say APL? . . . CG, what are we going to do with you.
I remember one of the guys out at work calling one of the special characters
thumb-tack circle and that's when I "ceased to remember" any of it. :wink:

 

[WendyZXZ]

I never did learn it, Kenneth did and did do some programming at one time. Most of his programming experience was and is RPG II, RPG 4, OCL and Control Language programming. The local junior college and trade school here no longer teaches any of that or gets into IBM systems, the 4 year university might but we have no idea if it does.

 

[toysoldier]

The Kansas unemployment comp program runs (crashes, actually) on a 43-year-old system. As far as I know, the hospital I work at still uses AS400 for financial dealings.

 

[WendyZXZ]

The Kansas unemployment comp program runs (crashes, actually) on a 43-year-old system. As far as I know, the hospital I work at still uses AS400 for financial dealings.

That is the system my husband works on and has for 30 years, before that it was a S/34 and S/36.

 

[exavid]

My first computer was a Commodore Pet 2000 I bought in 1978 from a friend in Ketchikan, AK.

I remember going to our local drugstore's magazine stand looking for new computer magazines. There were several different magazines that came out that printed out Basic programs one could load into their computers. It took hours of typing of course just for some pretty simple programs. Then there were hours to debug because there were several versions of Basic in those magazines which meant one had to type the whole thing into you computer, then run the program line by line until it crashed. Then one would have to figure out how to accomplish a patch that would work with your particular Basic version.

I spent many days entering and debugging my first word processing program. I only had an old TTY printer rigged up to print my results. Capitals only. On perforated fan fold paper.

One of the more infuriating things was our town had a big saw mill and once in awhile a log would jam the barker and the whole town's power would sag and dump a program. Considering I had no way to save my programs as power sag would dump the whole damn thing. It didn't take long before I'd rigged up an uninterruptible power supply for my computer. Two car batteries a car radio vibrator , a transformer and a few components did the job at least for a couple hours before the batteries died.

Oh yeah I remember those early days. Hard to believe how simple and powerful home computers become.

 

[Pat-inCO]

As far as I know, the hospital I work at still uses AS400 for financial dealings.

The AS400 is one of the . . . clearly . . . inferior operating systems.
They officially developed the OS in two years. I worked in the OS for a few months
and found modules that had been created two years in advance of when they
"started" development.

I've worked on/in many of the IBM operating systems. The ONE command that is
always operational for immediate execution is "shutdown". You totally kill the system
with that one command . . . . . . except the AS400, where it is a request to the OS.
The OS will then schedule the shutdown and it will happen, some time in the future.
I saw one time where the shutdown took twenty minutes. (el barfo)

 

[Igor]

I was a COBOL programmer for many, many years. I can remember when IBM's biggest, baddest newest mainframe came out, and we were impressed. The Model 370/165 had 1 meg of core storage, and it was cooled by refrigerated water. Our company ordered two of them, and eventually a third. Newer, faster, spiffier languages have mostly replaced COBOL, but it still has its uses, I guess.