
Why You Should Learn COBOL - klintron
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/06/why-you-should-learn-cobol.php#.TfD5wkofUjE;hackernews
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maxharris
Why should I trust what is basically a Micro Focus press release?

I actually had to use Micro Focus COBOL in a project once. It was awful: COBOL
the worst language ever (awful syntax, no local variables!) But what's worse
is that the Micro Focus product is nearly unusable (at least on unix
platforms). It's loaded with copy-protection garbage, and the installer is
deliberately left in a broken state so that you _must_ call Micro Focus
support (just guess what a support contract costs: it's not cheap.) This
should not happen when you drop three grand on a compiler.

Summary: avoid COBOL, unless you want to rely on a company that should have
been out of business long ago (and it probably will be; just wait a few
years), and a language that should never have existed.

~~~
gnufs
I couldn't be sure if their promotion video for COBOL was a parody the whole
time I watched it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUrdX9xJx58>

~~~
pjscott
That video is hilarious in small doses, and horrifying in larger ones. I'm
impressed.

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dougb
I took a COBOL class in college and I actually applied for a summer internship
at US Steel working on COBOL. Luckily, I didn't not get that job. Looking
back, I'm so glad I didn't, my life would have been so different. The hardest
part of learning COBOL for me was the spacing. Comments had to start with a
'*' in column 7 and are the rest of the line. Labels had to start in column 8.
Statements have to start in column 12 of later. It was not a fun language to
program in.

If they were really desperate for COBOL programmers we would see job posts
offering $200k for COBOL programmers.

~~~
ahlatimer
I think the column line depends on either the compiler or a setting somewhere.
When I wrote COBOL, the comments were in columns 72 to 80.

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adorton
"No other language is capable of representing business data as accurately as
COBOL,"

What does that mean? How is COBOL better at representing business data than
another enterprise platform - say Java, or .NET?

~~~
bkudria
Congratulations, sir, you win a prize! You have discovered a sentence of
meaningless bullshit in a mainstream technical publication that purports to
understand technology. This is an incredibly rare event and you deserve
recognition!

~~~
wickedchicken
At least it's not the awesomeness on cobol.com which boils down to "If you
don't use COBOL you will have to REWRITE software which is a RISKY and COSTLY
endeavor. COBOL makes everyone's life easier because you won't get FIRED for
suggesting alternatives."

~~~
rbonvall
But they are awesome! They want to give me a coffee maker for praising Cobol!

<http://www.cobol.com/competition>

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rdtsc
COBOL - kill it with fire.

I am one of those programmers that looks for companies that work with
technologies I love, because that makes sure I will be happy and they will be
happy. Jumping into a position using something I absolutely hate just because
they'll throw in another $50K/year or so at me won't work.

Perhaps others have a different phillosophy -- "anything that brings in more
money is fine", it is sort of a personal choice.

So my advice to kids is "Don't learn COBOL, learn something that is more
relevant today and something you are absolutely passionate about. (If you just
happen to be passionate about COBOL you are probably a very strange person
;-)"

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motters
I'm ashamed to admit that I actually have a qualification in COBOL, obtained
many many years ago. Even at the time it was a dead/obsolete language.

Some COBOL programmers were employed in the last few years of the 20th century
in order to combat the largely fictitious Y2K menace. There was a point at
which I could have joined that particular bandwagon, and I probably would have
had considerable earnings for a couple of years. But I knew enough about COBOL
that I didn't want to be anywhere within a barge pole prodding distance of it.

COBOL is a language which was probably incredibly appropriate and highly
useful within the culture and technological infrastructure of the 1960s/70s.
If a company advertises that it's still using COBOL or Visual Basic 6 then
this says to me that they're not interested in innovation, and that for
someone like me working there would be like doing the coding equivalent of a
jail sentence.

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rbanffy
... because nothing beats using a 3270 font with ISPF...

There are tons of COBOL code out there, with tons more being written every day
(because the tons already there won't be ported but still have to do new
stuff). You may get a job, even a steady one, but you won't have much fun
doing it. There are lots of programmers who write software not because they
like doing it, but because they feel it's a nice job.

But yes, you should learn COBOL. Only after you do it you'll be able to bash
it. There is nothing worse than a person who bashes a programming language
they aren't fluent in.

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ecounysis
In many ways this makes sense. Many of the people running these COBOL
companies are going to be retiring soon, creating a huge demand for COBOL
programmers.

But on the other hand I haven't seen any job advertisements for COBOL
programmers in years. Where is all this demand for COBOL engineers?

~~~
dman
[http://jobsearch.monsterindia.com/searchresult.html?fts=cobo...](http://jobsearch.monsterindia.com/searchresult.html?fts=cobol&loc=)

Infosys / Patni / TCS etc work on quite a few COBOL projects.

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wccrawford
2001 isn't nearly recent enough. For at least those 10 years, it has been very
hard to find COBOL programmers. Businesses don't take long to get sick of
paying a premium for antiquated goods.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that that number is now more like 20%, or even
less.

~~~
ajscherer
As sick of paying a premium for antiquated goods as businesses may be, they
aren't going to make a decision that has costs far in excess of it's benefits.

The benefit of abandoning COBOL is greatly increased programmer productivity.
The cost of abandoning COBOL is completely rebuilding your system from
scratch.

I could go on for days about why it's dumb for an organization to undertake a
massive project for which it is horribly ill-equipped in order to replace
something that works. Instead I'll just note that I used to work (not as a
programmer) at an organization that tried this. They ended up spending 8
figures for nothing more than the realization that they should hire more COBOL
programmers.

I agree that the percentage has dropped (due to organizations that use COBOL
dying and new ones avoiding it for obvious reasons), but I doubt it has
dropped that much.

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protomyth
I know of one company that, instead of retraining their employees, did their
website in COBOL.

~~~
ahlatimer
I worked for a company that did a website in COBOL instead of using PHP or
ASP.NET when they already had developers that did both.

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sigzero
I worked on a project once. It was COBOL but since COBOL wasn't quite good
enough they introduced another custom programming layer on top of it...in
COBOL.

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kbradero
'cause all you want is money but no neurons.

