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Short answer: No. Long answer: I did COBOL development on mainframes for the Canadian government and Xerox from 1996 - 1998, my first "real jobs" after univer
by jbarham 7y ago
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
I did COBOL development on mainframes for the Canadian government and Xerox from 1996 - 1998, my first "real jobs" after university.
COBOL in isolation isn't that bad a language. With a bit of discipline ("structured programming") it can be fairly readable. Most of the time it's used for large scale batch record processing in big institutions (e.g., governments, banks, insurance companies).
The problem with using COBOL in a mainframe environment is that mainframes are basically an evolutionary dead end so you're stuck using the associated gunk that has hardly changed since the 70's (editors, JCL, CICS). JCL in particular is notoriously user hostile and has been called "the worst programming language ever designed" by Fred Brooks, who managed its development (http://dtsc.dfw.ibm.com/MVSDS/'HTTPD2.APPS.ZOSCLASS.PDF(ZCLASS06)' http://dtsc.dfw.ibm.com/MVSDS/'HTTPD2.APPS.ZOSCLASS.PDF(ZCLA...).