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Most of the worlds largest enterprises run tons of this legacy cobol mainframe stuff. They solve really hard problems using this technology and we would be wise

Most of the worlds largest enterprises run tons of this legacy cobol mainframe stuff. They solve really hard problems using this technology and we would be wise not to be dismissive but instead to learn.

nn3 9y ago
Right they do, but they are also all working really hard on their transition plans away from it. See the original link for concrete data on that.
- paloaltokid 9y ago
  It depends. I work professionally with Fortune 500 companies and for many of them mainframes are here to stay. It’s true that many of them wish to modernize and move away from mainframes; but they don’t want to get rid of them entirely.
gaadd33 9y ago
Do people solve really hard problems with COBAL? I thought it was primarily a business language that replaces a lot of manual work. What sort of things has it found a niche for? Similar to how FORTRAN is used a lot in big data/physics?
- Dangeranger 9y ago
  Every bank, insurance, airline, and electric utility in the world older than 25 years old has a mountain of critical, working, and legacy software running COBOL and FORTRAN. With the generation of programmers who wrote the code retiring it’s even more entrenched because even though they rely on that code dearly, few if any people remember why it does what it does how it does it.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > With the generation of programmers who wrote the code retiring For many big COBOL systems that’s long past; in many cases the programmers that were coming on board when that generation retired are near retirement.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - wastedhours 9y ago
    I've often thought it's probably a cracking time to be get some COBOL skills - you could jack your day rate up to the point you could probably name your price. There's an institutional incentive to replace it eventually, so not a long term thing, but you could probably milk it for a good few years.
    - Nilef 9y ago
      I know COBOL programmers whose day rate is considerably north of £1000
  - gaadd33 9y ago
    That doesn't address the question I was asking, of course there are a lot of legacy COBOL systems out there. Do any of those legacy systems work on "hard problems" similar to how FORTRAN is still used in fluid dynamics, physics, crystallography and chemistry?
timClicks 9y ago
Where would one look if one wanted to learn COBOL though? There's a free C implementation, but barely anything else surrounding it.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  Where would one look if one wanted to learn COBOL though? One would look at google. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/index.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/index.htm

nn3 9y ago

Right they do, but they are also all working really hard on their transition plans away from it. See the original link for concrete data on that.

paloaltokid 9y ago
It depends. I work professionally with Fortune 500 companies and for many of them mainframes are here to stay. It’s true that many of them wish to modernize and move away from mainframes; but they don’t want to get rid of them entirely.

gaadd33 9y ago

Do people solve really hard problems with COBAL? I thought it was primarily a business language that replaces a lot of manual work. What sort of things has it found a niche for? Similar to how FORTRAN is used a lot in big data/physics?

Dangeranger 9y ago
Every bank, insurance, airline, and electric utility in the world older than 25 years old has a mountain of critical, working, and legacy software running COBOL and FORTRAN. With the generation of programmers who wrote the code retiring it’s even more entrenched because even though they rely on that code dearly, few if any people remember why it does what it does how it does it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > With the generation of programmers who wrote the code retiring For many big COBOL systems that’s long past; in many cases the programmers that were coming on board when that generation retired are near retirement.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- wastedhours 9y ago
  I've often thought it's probably a cracking time to be get some COBOL skills - you could jack your day rate up to the point you could probably name your price. There's an institutional incentive to replace it eventually, so not a long term thing, but you could probably milk it for a good few years.
  - Nilef 9y ago
    I know COBOL programmers whose day rate is considerably north of £1000
- gaadd33 9y ago
  That doesn't address the question I was asking, of course there are a lot of legacy COBOL systems out there. Do any of those legacy systems work on "hard problems" similar to how FORTRAN is still used in fluid dynamics, physics, crystallography and chemistry?

timClicks 9y ago

Where would one look if one wanted to learn COBOL though? There's a free C implementation, but barely anything else surrounding it.

mdekkers 9y ago
Where would one look if one wanted to learn COBOL though? One would look at google. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/index.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/index.htm