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I keep meaning to find the time to write something useful in COBOL. I've got a few ideas on useful things that would be a good fit for COBOL, but I haven't fou

I keep meaning to find the time to write something useful in COBOL. I've got a few ideas on useful things that would be a good fit for COBOL, but I haven't found the time to do so. I mainly want to do this for the learning experience. New languages/frameworks/etc are cool, but old ones are special in their own way too.

TomMarius 9y ago
Can you share some things where COBOL still shines today?
- Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
  The obvious answer is banking - A quick search of jobs in Toronto tells me that at least three of Canada's big five banks are running COBOL. It wouldn't surprise me if the rest of the big five were as well, they just didn't have any jobs on the first page of listings. Whether it shines or not in comparison to more modern languages is another matter.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    I thought COBOL is being used because of legacy code and technology, not because it's the best option, and new code is written in Java?
    - oblio 9y ago
      That's true for the banks that I know of (European ones). The new stack is sometimes .NET, but it's the same principle you mentioned.
- cat199 9y ago
  never worked in it, so cant actually say, but reading on the language periodically it seems to me actually kind of cool since it is so minimal and so designed around storing and retrieving data records and doing basic processing on them.. in a sense it is kind of like a minimalist programmable database engine that compiles to machine code..
  - the_af 9y ago
    Having used COBOL when I first started working, I can assure you "minimal" is not a word I'd usually think of in relation to this programming language. "Verbose" and "cumbersome" are more like it :)
- cydonian_monk 9y ago
  Reports. Batch processing. Business logic in desktop applications, provided you have a good framework and a compiler that works for your target environment. (I can't get into too many details for contractual reasons.) COBOL is English and generally easy to read, and the worst pitfalls are well known. As a result it's also easy to teach to anyone that has the slightest concept of logic. Especially managers, accountants, or other typically non-tech folks that ask for such reports or applications. It's much nicer to write software for folks that understand the limits of the tools being used to create it.

TomMarius 9y ago

Can you share some things where COBOL still shines today?

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
The obvious answer is banking - A quick search of jobs in Toronto tells me that at least three of Canada's big five banks are running COBOL. It wouldn't surprise me if the rest of the big five were as well, they just didn't have any jobs on the first page of listings. Whether it shines or not in comparison to more modern languages is another matter.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  I thought COBOL is being used because of legacy code and technology, not because it's the best option, and new code is written in Java?
  - oblio 9y ago
    That's true for the banks that I know of (European ones). The new stack is sometimes .NET, but it's the same principle you mentioned.
cat199 9y ago
never worked in it, so cant actually say, but reading on the language periodically it seems to me actually kind of cool since it is so minimal and so designed around storing and retrieving data records and doing basic processing on them.. in a sense it is kind of like a minimalist programmable database engine that compiles to machine code..
- the_af 9y ago
  Having used COBOL when I first started working, I can assure you "minimal" is not a word I'd usually think of in relation to this programming language. "Verbose" and "cumbersome" are more like it :)
cydonian_monk 9y ago
Reports. Batch processing. Business logic in desktop applications, provided you have a good framework and a compiler that works for your target environment. (I can't get into too many details for contractual reasons.) COBOL is English and generally easy to read, and the worst pitfalls are well known. As a result it's also easy to teach to anyone that has the slightest concept of logic. Especially managers, accountants, or other typically non-tech folks that ask for such reports or applications. It's much nicer to write software for folks that understand the limits of the tools being used to create it.