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New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
- fuck-it-all 7y agoDon't shoot! Let them burn!
- BooneJS 7y agoUnemployment putting people to work.
- vikramkr 7y agoHow hard is cobol to pick up and learn at the level needed to contribute? I'm sure there are many no longer employed programmers in the tri state area that might be able to help
- non-entity 7y agoI imagine it's pretty difficult. I'm not a mainframe programmer, but from my understanding you not only have to understand the COBOL languages, but various mainframe environment parts like the OS, APIs, databases, etc.
- commandlinefan 7y agoI did mainframe COBOL for a few years in the 90’s (Y2K fixes). It’s actually not that difficult - I could probably bring a Java developer up to speed on it in less than a month. COBOL is actually extremely easy to program in, but it’s also limited in its expressiveness, so you end up repeating yourself a lot, which leads to complex debugging sessions.
- OGWhales 7y agoIf you are already a decent programmer then switching to cobol can be easy. Cobol still uses the same logic, just with less fancy tools available. That other stuff really isn’t that hard. Most of it is copy and paste-able once someone explains it to you. It’s really easy. It could also likely be handled by someone else for a situation like this with new-comers simply writing cobol.
- Analemma_ 7y agoThe thing about old COBOL systems is, the language isn't the problem. Snark aside, it isn't that bad. The major issue is the code written in it. Remember, a lot of COBOL code comes from a time before a lot of programming best practices were discovered. Structured programming-- as in, actually having function calls instead of just GOTO statements everywhere-- was a novel hoity-toity concept when COBOL first existed. Relational databases? Forget about it, they won't exist for another decade and a half. You get flat files; if you're lucky there might be field separators, if you're unlucky you'll have to find the column widths in the code somewhere. And don't even think that any of it is documented. That's the sort of thing you're taking on when you jump into a legacy COBOL system.
- ravenstine 7y agoThat, and I don't imagine there's any tests written for a lot of these systems. :(
- bitwize 7y agoThere are plenty of tests written for them. They are just manual tests written up on literal, actual TPS reports (TPS = Test Procedure Specification) to be executed by humans.
- spitfire 7y agoMy god. Are you serious? TPS reports are real?
- jedieaston 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report And were widely used, at one point.
- DrScump 7y agoOne advantage of a legacy system is that you can create your own great test data just by making appropriate extracts of your existing legacy data. Where I worked, original test data was sparse and incomplete, and it avoided edge conditions. I, on the other hand, loved breaking stuff.
- agumonkey 7y agodepends on the codebase, some people showed me long lasting, semi patched, semi generated code and it was not pretty the language in itself is archaic but there's nothing difficult in it
- Aloha 7y agoI didnt find it too hard, I played with it a little in the IBM master the mainframe challenge. The hardest part for me, is IO was not handled by the application, so all your file IO was setup by the JCL job that called the cobol program, which just feels weird. It's actually quite easy to read, and much closer to plain english than say, C.
- insomniacity 7y agoThey came to my computer science course to pitch that challenge. I got as far as logging in to the mainframe and doing the first task before I stopped and thought “wtf am I doing? Why am I wasting time on this!” Despite this story and others, still think I made the right call for me!
- NikolaNovak 7y agoProgramming a net new isolated Cobol may not be difficult for experienced programmer. Difficulty (and/or downright hate, for many;) lies in 1. Ecosystem - obscure libraries rules and os that don't jive with posix-like mindset 2. Legacy code - having to dig into a ginormous monolithic program and figure out what some obscure pieces of code do, untouched and undocumented by anybody in your team, with ridiculous interdependencies and complexities. So it tends to be more of "how hard is Cobol in this particular application for this specific client" :-/
- gecko 7y agoIs there any way to learn the ecosystem? Last time I looked, you couldn’t just spin up z/OS in VMware and start hacking, which made it hard for me to figure out how I’d actually learn.
- thaumaturgy 7y agoIntern or junior-level in a COBOL environment, unfortunately. Like others are saying, the problem with COBOL isn't (just) the language itself, it's all of the decades of very delicate cruft that has grown up around it. COBOL-the-language is absurdly simple to the point of being a little brain-damaged; but you have to be able to work in an environment where there's really close coupling between COBOL and its host operating system, and where minor code changes can have unintended consequences in seemingly unrelated applications, and the database isn't transactional, and there's no version control, and...
- sigjuice 7y agoapt search cobol found this. open-cobol/bionic 1.1-2 amd64 COBOL compiler Also, I was hoping to find COBOL on learnxinyminutes.com, but didn't :/
- dpedu 7y agoOpen-cobol works, but be aware that it translates your source to C and then compiles that. If that doesn't matter to you, great! There's also tiny-cobol[0], but the project is dead and it only targets x86-32. [0] http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/ http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/
- wolco 7y agoNot too hard but a little unforgiving. JCL was harder to deal with.
- passer_byer 7y agoThis is the only book you need for JCL. Called, either the Brown-Blue book or Blue-Brown book. https://www.amazon.com/System-370-Job-Control-Language/dp/0471031550 https://www.amazon.com/System-370-Job-Control-Language/dp/04...
- wolco 7y agoWhen I had to learn it it was on a s/390. Would the 370 translate well?
- tyingq 7y agoThe ecosystem would be the harder part. It's either a 360 mainframe, AS/400, HP MPE, etc. The editors, compilers, runtime, batch schedulers, etc, are all different.
- sbierwagen 7y agoHere's a taste: https://qntm.org/zomg https://qntm.org/zomg >System z is a living fossil; it is computing archaeology; computing palaeontology. System z is an example of the principle "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" carried to its logical extreme. System z and its predecessors haven't broken for forty-five years: the "z" stands for "zero downtime" and some of these machines have been running continuously for decades without a reboot. Nor, therefore, have any of them ever been "fixed". >It uses EBCDIC, a character encoding wholly incompatible with ASCII featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences. It was, from 1983 to 2000, a 31-bit operating system. (Yes, thirty-one.) It does things with virtualisation of system resources and operating systems themselves that were thirty years ahead of their time, but all the interaction with z machines is still performed through an archaic green screen system from the 1970s, running in an emulator, with a 24x80 character screen. The screen is 80 characters wide because that is how many characters you could fit on a punch card. >The output from the Job Entry System, however, is 132 characters wide, because that was how many characters you could fit on the line printer where the output came out. Nowadays, of course, the output comes to the green screen. So you always have to scroll left and right to see all of it. The keys for scrolling left and right are F7 and F8. For scrolling up and down? F10 and F11. No, Page Up and Page Down will do nothing. >To enter a command? You hit the right Ctrl key. "Return" will do nothing. "Enter" will work, of course, but, AS YOU KNOW, "Return" and "Enter" are separate keys on your keyboard. "Return" is just above the right Shift key. "Enter" is way over next to the numeric keypad.
- perl4ever 7y ago"AS YOU KNOW, "Return" and "Enter" are separate keys on your keyboard" Just FYI, my laptop has "Enter" clearly printed on both keys.
- exhilaration 7y agoThings were different in the old days, young padawan: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:4800-52-mainframe-dumb-terminal-keyboard.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:4800-52-mainframe-du...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- commandlinefan 7y agoYet I’m sure they’re offering $60K/year.
- nodesocket 7y agoI whole heartedly agree. The problem with government tech positions is they are not even competitive. Instead of hiring three mediocre or less than mediocre engineers at $60k, why not hire an amazing $150k - $180k engineer? I’m pretty sure they have ceilings on positions just so people don’t get outraged at government salaries, but incidents and times like these prove government needs to be competitive with private business to attract talent. Especially in national security and healthcare roles.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoAbout ten years ago I worked for a consulting company that did lots of work for our state government. One particular state agency wanted to hire me to maintain the system we built for them but it would have been a nearly 50% pay cut. The only people they were able to hire on that pay scale were those who moved on the first chance they got from the private sector. Each time they'd end up giving us a contract to take care of things during the interim period and then train whoever they hired. Went through three cycles of that until I changed companies. Who knows, maybe they're still going through cycle after cycle of hire, programmer leaves, big contract the consulting company, train new person to take over. There's no way it was cheaper than just paying someone the going open market rate but the state pay schedule for that job classification simply won't allow it.
- tortasaur 7y agoThey aren't equipped to vet talent. If they hire a mediocre engineer for $180k, their situation has not improved.
- ceejayoz 7y ago> Instead of hiring three mediocre or less than mediocre engineers at $60k, why not hire an amazing $150k - $180k engineer? In many cases, it's literally not legal for them to do so. For example, at the Federal level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_ser... (These restrictions don't tend to apply to hiring one via a contractor at $250-500k/year, though. Sigh.)
- vaidhy 7y agoI used to work on mainframe COBOL during the Y2K times. While the language is easy to pick up and the OS specific things are not too hard, the style of programming can lead to issues. Typically, shared data structures are often stored in separate files called copybooks and they can be hard to track down. Most of the code is not in any source control repositories which means no one knows which is the actual deployed version. It was all fun times then..
- zozbot234 7y agoCOBOL copybooks are just .h files basically.
- tantalor 7y agoThat's not an issue with "style of programming", it's just complete disregard of software engineering basics.
- RickJWagner 7y agoEasy there. We're standing on the shoulders of those COBOL giants. What's obvious in 2020 was cutting-edge and forward-thinking in 1960. The rude kids of 2080 may sneer at your best code circa 2020.
- BurningFrog 7y agoDon't mean to brag, but I already sneer at 2020 code!
- Twirrim 7y agoI've certainly found myself sneering at code I wrote just last week.
- Falkon1313 7y agoIn an effort to be more efficient, I've begun sneering at it as I write it.
- c3534l 7y agoThe point at which the government should have rewritten their COBOL systems into a language that would have a talent pool to draw from was at least 30 years ago.
- _delirium 7y agoThere's a claim in one of the reply threads that they contracted HP to build a replacement years ago, but the project didn't succeed: https://twitter.com/tradel/status/1246526465207869440 https://twitter.com/tradel/status/1246526465207869440
- dehrmann 7y agoThis feels like government thinking around infrastructure or military hardware where you open up bids and accept the lowest offer. While there are problems with lowest-bidder-win, the real issue here is that systems like this are more living and breathing than one-off; you need a teams that tend to them, not bringing in a contractor.
- Lammy 7y agoThe linked Twitter thread includes replies from someone who worked on the intended-replacement system indicating that “in the field” data entry accuracy was one of the biggest problems and not something that could be easily solved in code.
- LeoTinnitus 7y agoThis is what happens when you have typical business moron-types get elected roles that treat complicated systems as though it's construction work. It is, but you can't have any joe schmoe off the street coming in and learn how to pour concrete in a day. This is something that requires practice and problem solving skills. And years of it.
- _delirium 7y agoJudging by how a lot of construction projects have gone, this might also be usefully applied to pouring concrete [1]! [1] https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/major-concrete-issues-found-in-silver-line-metro-extension/53398/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/major-concrete-issu...
- CWuestefeld 7y agoThis is all second-hand, etc., but from what I've heard, NJ's IT systems are a mess across the board. The most shocking story was about their system for tracking Medicaid patients. Their system had a fixed-width field for the patient's ID, and they ran out of identifiers - so they just started to recycle them again from the beginning. This problem was multiplied by the fact that, to say money, they didn't have backups of the original, clean data before the recycling. Thus it became pretty much impossible to understand what benefits had been afforded (or not) to whom. Governmental budgeting seems biased strongly in favor of labor expenses, especially those with seniority, to the detriment of the maintenance of capital assets. This is pretty much a recipe for technological debt.
- tjr225 7y agoAny state government it department is going to be a royal mess. I worked for the Washington state government for 6 months a few years ago and it was the worst job I’d ever had. I was at the top of my pay grade just under architect and only two years out of college making around 68k a year in Olympia. Olympia is not a cheap place to live. On top of that you’re basically legislates NOT to do work.
- momofarm 7y agohope they print those recycled record out!
- robofanatic 7y agoCOBOL was one of the few languages I was introduced to in college back in 90s along with C, BASIC and FORTRAN. Even back then people used to say that COBOL is a dying language.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoI was supposed to learn COBOL as part of class curriculum in the mid 2000s, but it was replaced with HTML and CSS instead.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thaumaturgy 7y agoI was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's been familiar with their particular pile of toxic waste for at least four years at minimum. They're asking for people with 4+ years of COBOL, and JCL (ok, fine), and DB2, and VSAM, and "SDLC" (proto-waterfall), and, oh yeah, a four-year degree. Heck, there's a posting asking for somebody to draw diagrams and document their existing processes, and for that they expect you to have 10 years of COBOL experience. Okay then. This is not yet a mess that they're motivated enough to fix.
- _bxg1 7y agoOr they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over-state resume requirements.
- meow1032 7y agoAs someone who works with a lot of state IT people, if they don't know how to hire programmers, they probably don't know how to manage programmers. In a bureaucracy, if the administrators are making these kinds of unrealistic hiring demands in a crisis, it probably means that the administrators outrank all programmers and don't trust them to make their own decisions. This is not an environment to work in.
- neaanopri 7y agoThis is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.
- renewiltord 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 7y agoI imagine the COBOL programmers are in the high-risk group for coronavirus.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DrScump 7y agoUnless working in a Halon-protected, 50-degree, raised floor environment confers immunity. It's only fair.
- mjcohen 7y agoI did COBOL for about 18 months in the Army in 1967-1968 on a RCA 501. Wonder if I would qualify. None of that other fancy stuff, though. Also RCA 301 assembly language.
- DrScump 7y agoAllan Sherman, the Weird Al Yankovic of his day, turned the tune from "Fascination" into "Automation" in 1963, a song about his RCA 503 sexually harrassing him: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RsDFYUD5KUA&t=20s https://youtube.com/watch?v=RsDFYUD5KUA&t=20s
- schmichael 7y agoTechies: What can we do to help? 3D print ventilators? Process terabytes of data in seconds? AI?! Govt: We need COBOL programmers. Techies: I am powerless to help. But seriously some of the brightest techies I know quit their jobs to do a stint of government work which included slinging VBA and ASP Classic to remove SQL injections from VA websites and other similarly unglamorous tasks with huge impact. If you want to be patriotic. If you want to make a difference. Government work can do that. You're probably not going to train a neural net to solve coronavirus, but you'll probably be able to stop 1000 hacks from ever happening or get help to someone who really truly needs it.
- incompatible 7y agoI could help rewrite in some other language.
- goto11 7y agoCan you also guarantee that the rewritten code does not change any undocumented behavior? I think that is the real challenge.
- lucidguppy 7y agoMaybe we'd be better off writing tests then...
- daveFNbuck 7y agoYou can't guarantee that for updates to the existing code either.
- scarface74 7y agoWe still haven’t learned. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
- incompatible 7y ago
- trynewideas 7y agoThis will sound weird, but they should call up Northwestern State University of Louisiana for an alumni list. They were one of the last 4-year places that had a COBOL-focused degree program, through to at least 2012.
- selimthegrim 7y agoProbably CGI in Lafayette hires them all
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tareqak 7y agoThis issue highlights one of my main fears about a pandemic such as COVID-19: if enough people with the necessary amount of knowledge to maintain necessary infrastructure die without sufficiently and timely trained replacements, then civilization as we know it becomes one more step closer towards total irrecoverable collapse. The prevalence of COBOL and other older programming languages in many parts of the world's critical infrastructure (unemployment claims here, finance, government, defense) means that the average age of someone maintaining these systems tends older. Older people tend to have more health issues. From the summaries of reports I read about COVID-19, the majority of the deaths happen among the elderly and those with other health conditions. The idea of civilization collapsing might seem fanciful and farfetched, but the idea struck me after watching a video that was submitted here on HN and the videos it references [0][1][2][3]. [0] Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization (English only) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk [1] Preventing the Collapse of Civilization [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY [3] Eric Cline | 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk
- Zenst 7y agoMany generational skills die out. Your grandparents would make their own butter, bread, many things today that are not so common. Then more, many skills lost over time and fact we are still working out some historical things got created, you can imagine rosetta code sites being a good thing to keep alive for the future. http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code
- bcrosby95 7y agoThe difference you're missing is we're still relying on COBOL, but we aren't relying on grandparents to make the butter and bread we eat lest we starve.
- Ericson2314 7y agoAh, I've always wanted to put my software archeology skills to the test with something like this.
- taytus 7y agoRelevant: https://twitter.com/Taytus/status/1246586694461202436 https://twitter.com/Taytus/status/1246586694461202436
- lazylizard 7y agoSo. The problem is. The rate you quote, if you were a cobol programmer, is that price gouging too?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ellius 7y agoThis reminds me of the article "COBOL and Legacy Code as a Systemic Risk." Like the pandemic itself, this was a foreseeable risk: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/cobol-and-legacy-code-as-a-systemic-risk.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/cobol-and-legacy-cod...
- chmaynard 7y agoI assume that every state unemployment compensation dept. has the same basic set of requirements as New Jersey with a slightly different set of business rules. Here's a crazy idea: all 50 states could cooperate and hire a company to develop a flexible, secure, modern system that's easier and cheaper to maintain.
- xyst 7y agoThe basic set of requirements are the easy part. It’s when you have to account for the differences between each state (50 factors!) is where the software becomes O(n^n) complex over the development of this product. Even the best private companies struggle to build similar systems for a single entity. I think each state should be accountable for their own programs. Avoids the “single point of failure” issue as well.
- imtringued 7y agoThere are still benefits to choosing the same ecosystem. If everyone uses Java or Go and the same web framework then they can invest money into libraries that are useful for all 50 states. I've been at organizations that simply decided to use the same stack as another state (not USA). You end up using the same plugins and libraries. Even if you choose the wrong ecosystem because it is not mature enough you can just build it yourself and everyone benefits.
- prirun 7y agoThe problem is, you have to get the politicians to agree to the same policies so that the code works for both states. Politicians don't like to be told "You have to do it this way because of the computer system". Politicians want to decide the rules, then make everyone follow them. They don't follow rules themselves.
- genieyclo 7y agoVideo clip of gov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJqlWSPJeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJqlWSPJeI
- adamsea 7y agoHas anyone ever built an interface ( software and / or custom keyboard ) specifically for interfacing with the terrible UI / ergonomics of COBOL / mainframe systems like this? Basically, has anyone ever built modern dev tooling or custom hardware to reduce the pain?
- ratboy666 7y agoDepends on what you mean. For example, my editor (which I use for work like this) MODE-'COBOL' 72.b -.a -.t -.h 8.h 12.h .r Roughly: for COBOL - ring alarm bell if I type past column 72. Do not autoindent. Do not use tabs (spaces only). Remove all tabulation except at column 8 and column 12. For FORTRAN 66 (77) work, I just set a single tabulation at column 7. But that is just me. You should look into THE: The Hessling Editor on linux, etc. Look into Regina Rexx. which would be all the "tooling" needed. You could run a mainframe emulator (look into Hercules) How is 80 column "punch card" style editing and printer output terrible?
- daly 7y agoI taught COBOL in grad school and used MVS/JCL/VSAM. I was an IBM systems programmer. I got turned down for a COBOL job a few years ago. Sigh.
- mister_hn 7y agoThey could move to ReactJS... Move fast and break things
- pdani 7y agoTheir own search for Cobol on their own site returns "Your search did not match any answers we have" - are they serious?
- justmyopinion42 7y agoWow, if they don’t have folks who can lead this redesign development project (SDLC? Ever seen a highly critical emergency project where the SDLC was not the first thing sacrificed in support of expediency?) 2nd is QA & testing. Their dates never change as slipping development dates are a given. This thing sounds like something begging to come off the rails before it even starts (Governor begging for COBOL coders) while having degree requirements for that kind of legacy experience? What’s the definition of a legacy system? Anything in production!
- blululu 7y agoI'm sure there is a lot to be said about the absurdity of this situation, but somehow this cartoon came to mind: https://abstrusegoose.com/323 https://abstrusegoose.com/323
- xyst 7y agoCompanies and government agencies need to “ante up” on the refactor of their old systems. I hope the position goes unfilled. Worst case scenario, the unemployment agency has to do it the analog way (“by paper”)
- justmyopinion42 7y agoHmmm. Sounds like every other mission critical emergency project in dire need of leadership, design and development. Perceived need way ahead of actual need, and legacy hiring practices (degree Requirements for legacy coders with 10 years experience and a degree, ha) not realistic to effectively recruit talented resources. Job interview should include - what’s the definition of a legacy system? Has anyone ever seen an emergency mission and time critical project where the SDLC WASN’T the first thing sacrificed for expediency? And the second is QA & testing - their delivery date remains fixed while development slips and slips. The point is, if you don’t have leadership that has been there done that, knows what is coming, is solving tomorrow’s issues (like finding and hiring resources) so when the project gets to that point, the resources are there and ready, then you are in the false start phase that will continue until you admit it, and begin again with refreshed plan and clear minds. Most SDLC’s do not recognize the false start as a very important first phase that must happen when a time critical emergency project is the only thing that can save the day. How long that phase lasts is dependent on how long it takes you to bring in the right leadership team to take control and begin anew. Since they are in panic mode with the Governor pleading for “COBALT” programmers you know this is in the Coming off the rails / false start phase. Some things you can’t short circuit around and luck out. not on really important stuff. It takes some good minds with excellent experience to noodle out what needs to happen, how to make it happen, line up the political and technical ducks and make it happen. This is a technology project using a rock solid mainframe programming language, COBOL. Don’t belittle it. Many of the nation’s largest banks still use COBOL based systems to process their mission critical applications, so quit whining about old mainframe technology being so obsolete. Those of us who have been there fully understand there are no longer many or any users who understand what entire systems do anymore - because those legacy systems have evolved over the years, projects all justified by headcount reductions in the user community. That means all that knowledge is now encapsulized within that cobol code in those legacy systems. So. If someone needs help responding to critical needs that were not anticipated (like an increase 100 or 1000 or 10,000 times the workload - New Jersey?), technology alone is not going to solve your problem, not quickly enough. You need many more people to do the processing of paying the unemployed until technology can catch up and take over. Pay me now or pay me later I always say. If you don’t believe my predictions, Call me when you become enlightened and I can help you then. Until then, good luck. PS: A legacy system is every system in production!
- DonHopkins 7y agoThey should just build a bridge gate to connect the island of old COBOL code with the rest of the world. But then Chris Christie would shut it down during morning rush hour. ;(
- Bobnaples 7y agoWhere do I sign up?
- strategarius 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS Wikipedia: "However, z/OS also supports 64-bit Java, C, C++..." Managers: "Why do we need budget spendings for that Java, everything works fine..."
- Bobnaples 7y agoWhere do we sign up?
- olodus 7y agoFor all the legacy Cobol out there and the amount of money everyone always says there is in this part of the industry, does there exist any cross compilers targeting Cobol lang or would it be possible for interop with other langs to slowly move away from the old systems?
- calypso 7y agoIt’s a trap!
- fredsmith42 7y agoI've got COBOL experience, but Everytime I check into these positions they aren't paying very well. I don't know about this particular case, but in general COBOL programmers aren't valued very much, despite the high demand within the narrow niches that still use COBOL.
- analognoise 7y agoWould it be feasible to put the code up somewhere, along with an emulator of the ancient system, and some dummy data for processing? I mean they're not going to pay enough to make it worth it, but some people might actually think it's fun, and maybe it will get more people interested.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 7y agoIn the 24th Century.... https://abstrusegoose.com/323 https://abstrusegoose.com/323
- Hpal2020 7y agoHow does anyone apply for this job if they know all these skills ? Covid19.nj.gov does not seem to post the Job at its site. Can someone help with where did you apply or saw the JD?
- dtbraun 7y agoInteresting. My family is pressuring me I should help out. I’m a retired expert with Cobol68, Cobol74 and Cobol85 (w/embedded SQL). Entire 42+ years career was on Burroughs/Unisys (early years) and Tandem Nonstop. I was on a Y2K project for a very large telecommunications company and had to change A LOT of COBOL code. In later years I managed software development teams. But at 64 years old, I ask myself do I want to work in any Covid-19 epicenters.