
The Inevitable Return of COBOL - nightfuryx
https://blog.hackerrank.com/the-inevitable-return-of-cobol/
======
spaced-out
Interestingly, in an article making the case that engineers should learn
COBOL, the only reference the article makes to COBOL salaries is at the end:

>“Four years ago, local Fortune 500 employers encouraged the university to
offer Cobol courses. Now, graduates who take Cobol electives earn starting
salaries of $75,000 compared to starting salaries of $62,500 for those who did
not.”

First, the WSJ article that it links to does not mention if the $62,500 stat
is for all graduates or for computer science graduates, nor if the people in
the $75,000 starting salaries are actually working in COBOL. The WSJ article
also includes this paragraph:

>[The COBOL] tipping point doesn’t worry David Dischiave, associate professor
and director of Global Enterprise Technology, Syracuse University, who says,
“I don’t buy into the idea that there is a shortage of Cobol programmers. If
there is a shortage, why aren’t employers responding to my calls to get jobs
for majors with Cobol experience? What employers do, rather than what they
say, matters most.”

I've heard plenty of rumors of COBOL programmers making big money, but when
I've tried search for jobs the salaries don't seem to compare to a Big-N. I
know job postings aren't the full picture, but all the research I've done
suggests that even Javascript pays better than COBOL, and gives you more
career opportunities. Why should a career-minded student spend their
independent study time on COBOL?

COBOL articles also often make vague claims that it is better at some
business-oriented tasks, but without a lot of specifics. The author gives this
list:

\- The capability for heterogenous “record-structure” data

\- The capability for decimal arithmetic

\- The capability for convenient report generation

\- The capability for accessing and manipulating masses of data (typically
made up of heterogeneous data structure).

I work on server-side Java/C++ at a Big-N, doing ETL pipelines and distributed
applications, and I have trouble believing that COBOL is better at any of
those tasks than a modern language with modern tooling/build system. If COBOL
is so great, where are the new adopters? Why is Apache Spark supporting R and
not COBOL?

~~~
Gravyness
Yep, it almost looks like a few companies got together and 'faked the demand'
for COBOL devs so that they don't have to pay them so much after the older and
wiser maintainers retired.

Or maybe we have a shortage of JS devs? Since they can program everything from
linked lists in microcontrollers to machine learning pipelines, and,
obviously, are well paid for it.

Edit: Like the other commenter here (sesuximo) said, "want to make a bet?"

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abdulhaq
COBOL isn't going to return, because it never went away.

~~~
tabtab
It's the Latin equivalent of human languages: it can't go out of style and
(significantly) change because it's never been in style (at least not since
the fall of Rome). That's why it's used for scientific naming.

------
devnull255
MOVE 'Y' TO NAILED-IT.

------
sesuximo
Want to make a bet?

------
NotAnOtter
I've never worked with COBOL. That being said, I find it hard to believe that
a selection of existing packages in Python / Node wouldn't cover 95% of what
COBOL has to offer.

~~~
mikem170
I gather that one of the values of COBOL is that the typical program runs on
mini/mainframe computers with the guarantee from IBM or whoever that the code
written in 1970 will still perform on a 2020 computer the exact same way -
inputs, outputs, etc.

Python does not have the same commitment or track record.

