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COBOL Is Everywhere. Who Will Maintain It?
- mathattack 9y agoCOBOL can be taught en-masse to farms of programmers if the rate is high enough. This isn't a technical issue, it's an economics issue. Some of the technical debt paydown will be captured by large bodyshops. Alternatively, the entire software will be outsourced to firms like Accenture or WiPro. (It may even allow the companies to book a short term gain)
- chmaynard 9y agoFor most HN readers, learning COBOL syntax and conventions would be a trivial task. If you want to be productive in a corporate mainframe environment, you will also need to get up to speed on operating system APIs, file systems, database interfaces, user libraries, and probably much more. Then you can start learning the business logic of your employer's applications. During your training, don't bother trying to find answers to your questions on Stack Overflow or examples on GitHub. Not much fun.