32 ms·

IBM will offer free COBOL training

322 points by jacobedawson 7y ago

thereyougo 7y ago
The article mentions a training class but i don't see any link to it actually. Would love to see this announcement from IBM
- mikequinlan 7y ago
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-open-mainframe-project-launch-initiative-to-help-train-cobol-coders/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-open-mainframe-project-lau... seems to have more information but the course itself (https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-course https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-co...) is just an empty Github repository. edit to add https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-mainframe-project-helps-fill-the-need-for-cobol-resources https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-ma... is the actual announcement.
  - thereyougo 7y ago
    Thank you for this
Endlessly 7y ago
Here is the official description & link to the course: “Open Source COBOL Training – a brand new open source course designed to teach COBOL to beginners and refresh experienced professionals. IBM worked with clients and an institute of higher education to develop an in-depth COBOL Programming with VSCode course that will be available next week on the public domain at no charge to anyone. This curriculum will be made into a self-service video course with hands-on labs and tutorials available via Coursera and other learning platforms next month. The course will be available on IBM’s own training platform free of charge.” [1] https://github.com/openmainframeproject https://github.com/openmainframeproject SOURCE: The full IBM press release is here: [2] https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-04-09-IBM-and-Open-Mainframe-Project-Mobilize-to-Connect-States-with-COBOL-Skills https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-04-09-IBM-and-Open-Mainframe-P...
- bdavis__ 7y ago
  COBOL and VS Code. How can an editor for those that can't understand vi be mentioned in a press release?
- johnmertic 7y ago
  I'll also add the Open Mainframe Project blog post here as well... https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-mainframe-project-helps-fill-the-need-for-cobol-resources https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-ma... A few other bits to clarify things ( coming from me being Director of the Open Mainframe Project )... - The coursework itself is being contributed to a new open source project being hosted by Open Mainframe Project ( CC-BY-40 license ). - We would have liked it to be ready at the time of announcement, but it literally got approved by the Open Mainframe Project TAC as a new project about an hour before the blog post went live ;-). Have no fear, it should be landing next week ( there will be a bit of work to come on translating docx files to markdown, in case anyone wants to help ). - Right now the course work focused on VS Code as an editor, but the project is very open to contributions that leverage other IDEs ( such as Eclipse Che, Atom, etc ) - Open Mainframe Project is part of the Linux Foundation, with IBM being one of the 30+ sponsoring organizations. - On the notes I've seen around "hey let's rewrite all that COBOL code in some modern language", I won't add more fuel to that fire ;-). I will however say there is some interesting work in a project hosted by Open Mainframe Project called Zowe ( https://zowe.org https://zowe.org ), which basically makes connecting to mainframe apps and data on z/OS much easier ( think REST APIs, CLI interface you can use on your laptop, App framework for creating browser based apps, etc ). Anyways - hope this helps! Feel free to ping me if you want more details or help getting engaged ( @jmertic on Twitter ).
BoysenberryPi 7y ago
This whole recent COBOL surge reminds me of a friend I had who was upset that he had a Bachelor's in Computer Science but still couldn't find a job while his friend with no college degree taught himself COBOL and got a job at a local bank.
- laurentdc 7y ago
  Yeah, the devs I met with the most stable and laid back jobs are all AS400, COBOL/CICS or IBM RPG experts
  - guessbest 7y ago
    That's probably because they work in isolation from newer technologies which are constantly adding business rules. Most of the mainframe work I see involves maintaining old code bases and handling batch processing.
    - lowercased 7y ago
      good guess. if the rest of the organization bends over backwards to ensure that you never have to update your code to accommodate, say, more than 8 ASCII characters in a password, or hashed passwords, and the rest of the org puts their security at risk to make sure your codebase never has to change... yeah, it might be a bit laid back... :)
guu 7y ago
There are three main efforts in the official announcement[0]: - Forum for COBOL programmers to express interest in volunteering or hiring[1] - Forum monitored by experienced COBOL programmers to help developers[2] - Open source COBOL training materials from IBM[3] (Available “in the coming days”) [0]: https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-mainframe-project-helps-fill-the-need-for-cobol-resources https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-ma... [1]: https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/calling-all-cobol-programmers/15 https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/calling-all-cob... [2]: https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/cobol-technical-questions/16 https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/cobol-technical... [3]: https://github.com/openmainframeproject https://github.com/openmainframeproject
- silviumatei 7y ago
  I'm working in IBM (Europe) in a project that has the main business app in COBOL. Using Java and jt400.jar we just expose via web services the business. Even now we have in team COBOL programmers that creat new programs. I find the main issue when you want to learn COBOL is the access to a machine as close to real one an not a simulator. Maybe openmaineframeproject is the missing link between learning and practice.
  - lokedhs 7y ago
    I agree. I have attempts to learn COBOL on a few occasions, but it's always stopped by the fact that there are, as far as I can tell, only three ways to do it without investing sometimes insurmountable amounts of money: The first is GNU Cobol. It's quite functional for its intended purpose: To port mainframe applications to Linux. However, when writing a new application on Linux you usually want to do things like access arbitrary files (without hardcoding the filename in the source) or make network connections. It does have nice interactive screen support though. The other option is to run MVS 3.8j in Hercules. This is a predecessor to the current z/OS which runs on mainframes today. The problem with this is that it's stuck in the 70's (which is when the last free version of MVS was released). A lot of work has been done by the community to keep it up to date, but the Cobol compiler is the language of 40 years ago, not modern Cobol. None of the above options are really appealing unless you're like me and have a thing for messing around with stuff in their non-native environment. The third option is: http://mtm2019.mybluemix.net/ http://mtm2019.mybluemix.net/ When signing up, it gives you access to a z/OS account where you have a surprising level of access. It's probably running on an emulator (it's quite slow) but it does give you access to modern software, including compilers for Cobol, C, Java etc. It also has DB2 installed. However, the purpose of this option it to learn z/OS, not necessarily learn Cobol. And developing using the ISPF editor isn't particularly nice. They do give you ssh access to the Unix-compatibility environment though so maybe it's possible to edit files using Tramp in Emacs locally. I haven't tried that. In any case, what is needed is a proper Cobol development environment that you can run locally on your workstation. As far as I understand, that's how Cobol developers normally work. IBM would do well by releasing such a product for free. However, I'm not having high hopes given the fact that the mainframe division seem to be actively hostile to any free software (look into the difficulty the community has to get even the smallest community-made improvements accepted by z/OS, or releasing some small tool for the MVS community).
speedgoose 7y ago
Personally I would like to be paid to learn such a technology.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  There are techs people would accept pay cuts to work with and there's cobol.
kazinator 7y ago
That's a bit like Tom Sawyer offering free fence painting.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jasonkester 7y ago
This isn't the first time the world has needed lots of new COBOL programmers to burst on a single project. I'd suggest the same solution as last time: pay people $500-$1,000 per hour on short term contracts to do so.
- dm319 7y ago
  As a healthcare worker who also has an interest in programming - why does this comment not surprise me in HN? If a worldwide pandemic doesn't make you reflect on problems in our societal structure - that our key workers are the most poorly paid, but part of a necessary backbone of any country, and that the most over-paid workers are often the least 'key' at times like this - then I guess nothing will. But sure, the solution is just to pay programmers more money, because that is all they care about.
  - irrational 7y ago
    How will you get them otherwise? There are way more jobs than qualified developers. Why would anyone want to work on an antiquated technology stack like Cobol? By the time they get up to speed on fixing the Cobol systems, the pandemic will be over. The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers.
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      > The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers. Assuming the 're-written' version isn't similarly out of date by that point in time, the real solution is for business/government to finally understand that if your org depends on software then it's infrastructure that requires constant maintenance and scheduled replacement. Getting them to understand that is an exercise for the reader.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
      >> Why would anyone want to work on an antiquated technology stack like Cobol? Because it's actually a hell of a lot of fun. I did a year in a Cobol shop as a graduate developer at a large financial corporation. Working on a mainframe was the most fun I had on that job. And why not? You're logging on to a gigantic computer with millions of users and billions of transactions daily, with a text-based user interface that looks like it was designed by Tarn Adams. And I say that 100% as a compliment. Seen another way, the "antiquated Cobol stack" is like a deep dive into the history of computer science and programming languages. You can see with your own eyes how stuff used to be done 50 years ago. And there is so much to learn. It's not just Cobol: there's a whole bunch of other languages like Rexx for example that is like javascript on a mainframe, or like, well, JCL which is an absolute horror to behold of course. There's a whole new operating system to learn, or three and there's a whole new computer architecture to become familiar with. How is that not absolute programmer heaven? I mean, seriously, when I first got all the permissions and so on that I needed to work on a mainframe, I was giggling to myself like a little girl. "Really? They gave me access to all this?". It was like someone had given me the keys to the playground. The job sure got a bit boring after a while, which is the reason I left, but for a few months it was just sheer tomfoolery, poking at things and finding how things worked. >> The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers. That is not a sustainable solution. Fifty years from now people will be making jokes about "that antiquated Python stack" and state agencies will be ringing alarm bells for the lack of experienced young Python programmers. You can't just keep throwing out all the old code and replacing it with whatever new language is cool right now.
number6 7y ago
I don't want to sound condescending but why can't these systems be rewritten in a modern language? Now is obviously not the right time to do this; I am wondering are there technical limitations to do his?
- jimbob45 7y ago
  They’d have to be revalidated. Don’t fix it if it’s not broken. Edit: and when do you upgrade? If they upgraded in ‘85, it would be in C++. ‘95, and it would be Java 1.0. ‘05 and it would have been VB6. None of those would have been substantially better save that they would have been easier to hire maintenance programmers for.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    And now that they're broken, they can't be fixed. ;) With so many legacy systems that are often in very important places, I wonder whether it wouldn't be smarter to spend money on systems converting a modern language to cobol, e.g. python2cobol. Is that impossible?
    - number6 7y ago
      I guess there are technical reasons. a big bank does risk assessment. I can't imagine a problem like this will go unnoticed for long
  - number6 7y ago
    Ok got it. But it seems to be broken somehow if they need programmers now. Maybe write the tests first so it can be validated easier?
  - ghayes 7y ago
    C++ or Java seem like great alternatives. And I don't get the reference to VB6-- in 2005, it would still have been Java, and in 2015.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    Upgrade? You mean re-write.
safgasCVS 7y ago
What other languages can we expect to see a similar surge in demand? FORTRAN? In the data analysis space my bet is on SAS
- exdsq 7y ago
  You joke but I still see FORTRAN jobs around where I live than Ruby. I even worked for a consultancy that did a Matlab -> FORTRAN rewrite.
  - tossup8536 7y ago
    Fortran is super fast. For math/analytical stuff it's preffered over C. But to avoid relyance on a language with so few devs, these orgs dhould only have code that the the heavy lifting math in fortran. And use expose those as wrspped functions to some other more common and easier to use/mantain/hire
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      Indeed - with its stricter semantics Fortran is much easier for the compiler to generate a highly optimized machine code for.
- metreo 7y ago
  Fortran (standardized without caps for at least the last couple decades) is current to the 2018 release. I haven't come across anybody who cares or is using it. You do eventually see a lot of older code in it in symbolic and algebraic maths in the deeper code bases still because the algorithms are complex and nobody really wants to touch someone else work if it can still be wrapped in something like R or Python and is nearly as performant as C/++.
  - metreo 7y ago
    I guess the thing about Fortran, to circle back to your question, is that it isn't common in critical infrastructure.
watt 7y ago
It's a trap. The problem with those old codebases that governments, hospitals, big businesses are struggling with is not really the language, it's the engineering practices of that time with regards to constraints of old technology. The language is not the problem - lack of comments, bad variable naming, bad structure (little or no procedures or readability), and just sheer volume of it, is. It would be very interesting to see the old systems rewritten in a modern language, with modern engineering practices, but keeping the old UI and UX (which often is incredibly ergonomic) - so as to limit scope and not mess it all up by trying to introduce mouse navigation and windowing mess.
- brnt 7y ago
  Just finished a contract with a hospital that built a lot of stuff in house in the 80ies based on a C (still pre C89 in many places) and Delphi/Pascal. The problem is indeed volume (over 10MLoC), two or three wizards supporting it all, but firmly coding like it's '83. No training of newcomers whatsoever, and thus really no way to contribute. If you manage to get some support, it will be once a year and in the form of code they wrote for you without much feedback possible. Management prefers not to think about long term, because management obviously does not think long term.
  - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
    Is it possibly not a management problem at the core? I mean, I know exactly what you mean about suits like to ignore the future, but I've worked with a few 'wizards' who, once they've got the job under their belt, use it to keep other people out. They'll not comment, help, document or whatever, and once they're doing that, they are uncontrollable. They can't be sacked because they're the only ones keeping the system running, and they won't help others train up. That seems a very difficult situation for the suits to deal with, even if they want to.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      well if you have 3 guys that are the wizards that can't be sacked, hire 3 contractors for a year long project to document things sufficiently that these guys become more sackable. Contractors of course have to be highly experienced as well, and well-remunerated, so maybe management doesn't want to go down that expensive avenue, which means it's a management problem. Not to mention the years where they did not comment, help, document or whatever, and became uncontrollable sounds like a management problem over those years.
jonhendry18 7y ago
I'm sure after you finish the training you'll find all the ads looking for people with 5 years experience. Assuming the demand for people still exists by then.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  No, they need senior programmers so 10+years experience. In the same way they ask for 10+years programming experience in Swift or Rust
metreo 7y ago
Do you really want to end up in a situation where you're in a position of maintaining someone else's ancient codebase? I guarantee you this is not a path to anywhere but misery.
- unnouinceput 7y ago
  As a freelancer who does this 2 out of 3 jobs, I can tell you is definitely fun if you like challenge as in debug for 3 hours to only realize the old coder in 80's never initialized a structure and a newer tool was used to create the modern platform. And when you come on-board for maintenance/upgrade you are not told this from nobody. So misery or challenge, depends on your point of view, but the other side of the coin is..well, the coin itself, it's huge :). You get paid handsomely.
  - metreo 7y ago
    Reportedly, there are definitely more interesting challenges. We are seeing this in academia quite frequently where the older professors have some hard worked program in BASIC from whenever and they try really hard to get someone to maintain it's existence since otherwise their efforts really do disappear. For the person taking this on it's tedious, thankless and of dubious tangible merit to the participant who should be focused on their own contemporary work. Have the reports of high pay been confirmed, AFAIK the push now is for volunteers.
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  I really like working with ancient codebases. There is no more satisfying thing than deleting 10k+ line of spaghetti code. Yes, you have to spend days or even weeks to figure out how it works. Hunt down edge cases, bugs. If you like playing detective you will like it. I rather work on a huge legacy codebase than rewrite the same CRUD app in the JS flavor of the week.
- jpindar 7y ago
  I have some experience at porting ancient software to more modern languages, and I found it very satisfying. Maintaining it as it is, without the authority to document and refactor it might not be as much fun though.
altitudinous 7y ago
My first serious computer job (early 1990's) was COBOL. I last used it in 1997, then moved on to Oracle PL/SQL, Java, Oracle's Java software stacks and now iOS ObjC/Swift. Now I'm 52 years old. I have my own apps now on the store, don't need the money but I am looking for a new challenge - something a bit more social than working for myself. I think I'll do this COBOL refresher. Only issue is I'm in Australia but I see there may be some demand here too. Nothing to lose - plenty of time at the moment to do the courses. Good for a laugh anyway.
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
  Serious question, why do you use COBOL and "looking for a new challenge" in the same post? I found it a trivial language with a syntax that goes on for pages. It's entirely uninteresting. The only challenge is understanding any business requirements, and that's not a language thing.
  - altitudinous 7y ago
    The language itself is trivial to learn, the environment COBOL is running in is usually the challenge. I really enjoy bug fixing existing software, and I enjoy learning about existing systems. As I said I am done with working for myself, and as for the social aspect, I'd find it interesting to work with peers who may be closer to my age, and not a group who is just starting in the game working on their first big piece of software. I was there 30 years ago, this seems an opportunity to work with more mature and experienced folk. Also back in the day there were far more women working in software than there are now, there may be more gender balance in the older technologies.
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    It's interesting to me that systems could be written that function correctly once they go live and don't have to be taken offline for decades... the architecture, not the language
    - altitudinous 7y ago
JustARandomGuy 7y ago
From the article: * State unemployment agencies are notoriously underfunded* And there’s the problem summarized in less than a single sentence. Yes, they need help, but it’s the same kind of “help” as in “I want a BMW but I only have a dollar, please help” There would be a ton more COBOL coders if companies paid the equivalent of FANG companies - I say this as a former COBOL coder myself
- wyclif 7y ago
  These New Jersey and elsewhere new COBOL jobs are all volunteer, they are not paid jobs?
  - Cyberdog 7y ago
    I am curious about this as well. If we take this "volunteer" word being used in these articles at face value, it means these states are asking for people to work on their systems for free… you've got to be frickin' kidding me. It's such a preposterous idea that I can only believe that it must have been an error or misinterpretation at some level which has entered into and lingered in the news zeitgeist like a fart in the shower and that these states actually do intend to remunerate their contractors at a fair rate. Why else would anyone accept these contracts? Are there really people who are both experienced COBOL devs and such huge fans of the bureaucracy of their states that they'll serve them for free? If there really is any overlap on that Venn diagram, it must be quite small - and shame on every single one of them for devaluing themselves.
    - lowercased 7y ago
      They might mean 'volunteer' like people 'volunteer' for the army in the US. you get paid, and get the tools provided, etc., but you're not going to be forced out of your current life and conscripted in to COBOL work. It's a bad word though, because it creates these confusions. However, they might be at a max of existing COBOL 'full timers'. Who would 'volunteer' to leave their current dev roles to jump in to the NJ COBOL life? Might mean moving to NJ as well...
withdavidli 7y ago
Had to recruit for COBOL engineers 8 years ago. Almost impossible finding someone with less than 10 years of experience. Most were 15-20+ years of experience and about to retire. Many with COBOL experience moved to cloud tech that would never move back to COBOL that would cause them to be outdated. New people in the field seemingly only got trained because they were willing to learn it at a bank. It's a struggle to hire these people cause there are so few people and many companies only want to hire local talent (within 20-50 miles, and don't want to do VISAs). There's money to be made on supporting tech this old, likely more on the consulting side than becoming an internal employee.
Aloha 7y ago
I'll likely run they this course. I've always been interested in this kind of tech, I did mastering the mainframe previously
quickthrower2 7y ago
Next: COBOL 30 day bootcamp with guaranteed job at the end.
- Cyberdog 7y ago
  I'd say yes to that in a heartbeat. Thirty days is probably not enough to someone new to programming, but to experienced programmers in various other languages it's probably enough to get the basics down and get over the "know just enough to be dangerous" hump. If these orgs desperate for devs want to put their money where their mouth is and start a program like that, hit me up. Sure.
  - jpindar 7y ago
    Same here.
  - JustARandomGuy 7y ago
    I'd sign up for something like that in a heartbeat. I used to do COBOL, but the problem is that possibilities for advancement are very limited - there's far more jobs available - and promotion pathways - for a Python or Java coder than there is for a COBOL coder. In exchange for a refresher in COBOL and a guaranteed job, yes that is a much better deal.
say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
Unemployment claims processing is something that each State does and yet each has its own unique way of handling it. This approach is followed for every multimillion dollar endeavor, building costly, redundant solutions to the same problem. This has been great for the private sector but costly for the public.
Someone1234 7y ago
The IRS, treasury, and others locally are looking for COBOL programmers. I can explain why they're struggling to find any just by looking at the pay scale: $30,113 - $86,021 (GS-5 through GS-12, and most won't get the top end of the GS-12 scale). The $30K GS-5 starting is almost as low as working for their call center which is farcical. By contrast state, county, and even city government are paying $65K - $85K starting going all the way up to $100K at the top end. And these are jobs where you're doing modern development, not COBOL. People will start learning COBOL as soon as it makes rational sense. As it stands a lot of organizations aren't looking for any COBOL developer, they're looking for CHEAP COBOL developers. It doesn't make sense to learn when you'd lose money for taking those jobs.
- beefield 7y ago
  > As it stands a lot of organizations aren't looking for any COBOL developer, they're looking for CHEAP COBOL developers. This is one of my pet peeves. I am also thinking that it is outrageous that I am facing such lack of supply of Porsches. What? What do you mean, I should be paying more than a thousand bucks for a brand new Porsche? What sense would that make?
- marktangotango 7y ago
  This is exactly true. The pay is this low because there is a glut of cheap cobol developers in the US due to decades of off shoring. There have been 2000+ cobol developers laid off here over the past 5 years alone (medium midwest metro).
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    There cannot simultaneously be a surplus of COBOL developers and a shortage of COBOL developers. Well, supposedly there could be one in the Midwest and one in NJ, but theoretically those who do not have a job in the Midwest would be motivated to move, since their only options are: A) Remain jobless in Midwest. B) Switch careers in Midwest. C) Move to NJ for immediately available position. The bigger question is why does a COBOL dev accept work for 60k when they could make 120k in Javascript?
geogra4 7y ago
I looked out of curiosity and there are less than 10 Cobol jobs where I am (4 mln metro area, USA) seems like this is mostly marketing?
erynvorn 7y ago
Young COBOL specialists are being fired here and there. They can't find a job. They can't "volunteer" either they need to get paid at the end of the day. I see Fiserv firing all their 3-6 years COBOL juniors (last in, first out.) They retain only the most expensive 15-25 years pros.
lame88 7y ago
"Why? Because coding a percentage in COBOL would take an estimated five months." Five months to code a percentage, or five months to add the calculation, integrate that data point with other systems (does this need to be shown as its own field on any unemployment forms or reports? etc.), test it to the point where it has been demonstrated stable enough to be included in a critical system, and then deliver this change? I don't know the first thing about COBOL but the fact that government is (for good reasons) slow to move, the stability needed in critical things like unemployment processing, and all the other things that go into "coding a percentage", explain that timeline a hell of a lot more than what language was used.
salamanderman 7y ago
It's very frustrating to me that we're even talking about these COBOL programs today. During Y2K there was suddenly a huge demand for COBOL programmers to come out of retirement and young programmers to frantically learn it. The claim I remember at the time was that those systems should have already been rewritten, but the departments were underfunded, and they were finally doing it since it was an emergency. And yet, all they did was a little hacky patch and 20 years later it's still running. So we're 40-60 years on with these pieces of software. Look for whatever hacks they made for Y2K to be biting people in the butt again in 20-40 years, and programming historians to be pulled out of universities to patch again.
ravenstine 7y ago
Unless they are going to pay me way above my current pay to compensate for dealing with an obsoslete language and the programming practices of its era, no way. This is a great non-monetary example of one of the biggest issues we are seeing in our time. That is, as a civilization, we have become terrible at investing in future contingencies. In the last few months, we have witnessed how our biases prevented most of us(and businesses) from building up a meaningful savings for stormy weather, and the COBOL situation is hardly different. Banks could have invested in gradually switching from older mainframes to modern ones with software built with any modern language, and they were(or should have been) in one of the best positions to do this. Instead, they said "whatever" or simply were complacent in where technology was headed, and did little or nothing. As a society in it's current state, we need to seriously look at ourselves in the mirror.
factchecker01 7y ago
The site is horrendous with ads
vmh1928 7y ago
I'd imagine a lot of the problems are due to the increased volume. So that would show up as abends due to exceeding data set size definitions in JCL, VSAM, IMS or DB2 (or even IDMS and the other database technologies in use 20 - 30 years ago.)If the unemployment system is adding a covid related unemployment code then they would need someone to crawl through the code looking for where the logic needed to change in calculating benefit amount, duration of benefits and such.
tekchip 7y ago
All this, Cobol programmers are in short supply and now let's train new ones, sounds like a sort of technical debt bailout. As some have noted management has failed to look to the future and now their business has a major problem they are struggling to deal with. Same as we debate not bailing out, financially, companies that failed to plan for future disaster or catastrophies I would argue we don't bail out these companies that failed to maintain their own internal technical architectures by planning for upgrades and future maintenance. It's akin to the BS ISPs argue about not being able to afford to maintain it upkeep their infrastructure. It's largely BS. Put less in the upper managements pocket and more in the business and all of a sudden the business works and has resiliency against unexpected events. If you don't think these "vital" banks and hospitals can't afford it then you haven't been paying attention.
strategarius 7y ago
I would not have attended one even if I got paid for it. Why should I flush my career in toilet, sentencing myself to dig into piles of 50 y.o. crappy code. Stop riding dead horse.
arkanciscan 7y ago
Let it die
phendrenad2 7y ago
Okay so I can learn it, but can I run it? Is there a mainframe simulator out there?
bobbydreamer 7y ago
This month I wrote 2 Rexx stored procedures 1. Does a db2 bind 2. Executes any DML, DDL, DCL and selects in Db2 These stored procedures will be triggered by REST APIs & Endevor(version control). What makes me happy is, these will work for another 10+ years without any upgrades or me tinkering the code again for new version. Well if it was any web technology or cloud application, I would be getting a mail from them saying they are going to decommission a version of language so either you need to rebuild your code only to know it fails in new version(every 2 years). Well that doesn't happen in mainframe.
prirun 7y ago
COBOL programs are divided into paragraphs that start with a paragraph name and have a group of statements within the paragraph. A program starts at the first paragraph and continues sequentially through multiple paragraphs until a STOP RUN statement is executed or it executes the last statement in the last paragraph. Easy peasy. Well, not so fast. If you PERFORM a paragraph, then it's like a BASIC GOSUB statement, or "jump and store" in assembly language. Sort of like a function call, but with no local variables. Or you can do PERFORM A THRU B to jump to paragraph A, continuing sequentially until the end of paragraph B. Or you can do PERFORM A THRU B VARYING X FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL C, which is sort of like a for loop. The nasty thing about all this is that looking at a paragraph (block of code), you can't tell shit about how it gets executed. Does it fall through to the next paragraph? You can't tell: that's determined dynamically at runtime. Is it a loop? Can't tell. That's one of the things that makes large COBOL programs really hard to understand. Another fun COBOL statement is ALTER: https://riptutorial.com/cobol/example/19820/a-contrived-example-using-alter https://riptutorial.com/cobol/example/19820/a-contrived-exam... If you think GOTO is bad, it's a walk in the park compared to the lethal combination of ALTER + GOTO. Basically, when you say GO TO A, it can go to some other place based on a previous ALTER statement. Now we're having fun!
ralphc 7y ago
Forget the talk about pay too high, too low. This is a way to help our neighbors who are hurting, a way to help with our skills. A question I'll ask is, someone like me; retired from a long development career, experience in many languages but not COBOL. Could I take this course, or a similar one, and be useful to prop up a rickety code base on a volunteer basis? If yes, are any of these states allowing remote work on it?
ChrisArchitect 7y ago
meanwhile, in the 24th century... https://abstrusegoose.com/323 https://abstrusegoose.com/323 (gonna keep posting this on all the COBOL threads haha)

322 points by jacobedawson 7y ago

The article mentions a training class but i don't see any link to it actually. Would love to see this announcement from IBM

mikequinlan 7y ago
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-open-mainframe-project-launch-initiative-to-help-train-cobol-coders/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-open-mainframe-project-lau... seems to have more information but the course itself (https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-course https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-co...) is just an empty Github repository. edit to add https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-mainframe-project-helps-fill-the-need-for-cobol-resources https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-ma... is the actual announcement.
- thereyougo 7y ago
  Thank you for this

Endlessly 7y ago

Here is the official description & link to the course: “Open Source COBOL Training – a brand new open source course designed to teach COBOL to beginners and refresh experienced professionals. IBM worked with clients and an institute of higher education to develop an in-depth COBOL Programming with VSCode course that will be available next week on the public domain at no charge to anyone. This curriculum will be made into a self-service video course with hands-on labs and tutorials available via Coursera and other learning platforms next month. The course will be available on IBM’s own training platform free of charge.” [1] https://github.com/openmainframeproject https://github.com/openmainframeproject SOURCE: The full IBM press release is here: [2] https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-04-09-IBM-and-Open-Mainframe-Project-Mobilize-to-Connect-States-with-COBOL-Skills https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-04-09-IBM-and-Open-Mainframe-P...

bdavis__ 7y ago
COBOL and VS Code. How can an editor for those that can't understand vi be mentioned in a press release?
johnmertic 7y ago
I'll also add the Open Mainframe Project blog post here as well... https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-mainframe-project-helps-fill-the-need-for-cobol-resources https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-ma... A few other bits to clarify things ( coming from me being Director of the Open Mainframe Project )... - The coursework itself is being contributed to a new open source project being hosted by Open Mainframe Project ( CC-BY-40 license ). - We would have liked it to be ready at the time of announcement, but it literally got approved by the Open Mainframe Project TAC as a new project about an hour before the blog post went live ;-). Have no fear, it should be landing next week ( there will be a bit of work to come on translating docx files to markdown, in case anyone wants to help ). - Right now the course work focused on VS Code as an editor, but the project is very open to contributions that leverage other IDEs ( such as Eclipse Che, Atom, etc ) - Open Mainframe Project is part of the Linux Foundation, with IBM being one of the 30+ sponsoring organizations. - On the notes I've seen around "hey let's rewrite all that COBOL code in some modern language", I won't add more fuel to that fire ;-). I will however say there is some interesting work in a project hosted by Open Mainframe Project called Zowe ( https://zowe.org https://zowe.org ), which basically makes connecting to mainframe apps and data on z/OS much easier ( think REST APIs, CLI interface you can use on your laptop, App framework for creating browser based apps, etc ). Anyways - hope this helps! Feel free to ping me if you want more details or help getting engaged ( @jmertic on Twitter ).

BoysenberryPi 7y ago

This whole recent COBOL surge reminds me of a friend I had who was upset that he had a Bachelor's in Computer Science but still couldn't find a job while his friend with no college degree taught himself COBOL and got a job at a local bank.

laurentdc 7y ago
Yeah, the devs I met with the most stable and laid back jobs are all AS400, COBOL/CICS or IBM RPG experts
- guessbest 7y ago
  That's probably because they work in isolation from newer technologies which are constantly adding business rules. Most of the mainframe work I see involves maintaining old code bases and handling batch processing.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    good guess. if the rest of the organization bends over backwards to ensure that you never have to update your code to accommodate, say, more than 8 ASCII characters in a password, or hashed passwords, and the rest of the org puts their security at risk to make sure your codebase never has to change... yeah, it might be a bit laid back... :)

guu 7y ago

There are three main efforts in the official announcement[0]: - Forum for COBOL programmers to express interest in volunteering or hiring[1] - Forum monitored by experienced COBOL programmers to help developers[2] - Open source COBOL training materials from IBM[3] (Available “in the coming days”) [0]: https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-mainframe-project-helps-fill-the-need-for-cobol-resources https://www.openmainframeproject.org/blog/2020/04/09/open-ma... [1]: https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/calling-all-cobol-programmers/15 https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/calling-all-cob... [2]: https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/cobol-technical-questions/16 https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/cobol-technical... [3]: https://github.com/openmainframeproject https://github.com/openmainframeproject

silviumatei 7y ago
I'm working in IBM (Europe) in a project that has the main business app in COBOL. Using Java and jt400.jar we just expose via web services the business. Even now we have in team COBOL programmers that creat new programs. I find the main issue when you want to learn COBOL is the access to a machine as close to real one an not a simulator. Maybe openmaineframeproject is the missing link between learning and practice.
- lokedhs 7y ago
  I agree. I have attempts to learn COBOL on a few occasions, but it's always stopped by the fact that there are, as far as I can tell, only three ways to do it without investing sometimes insurmountable amounts of money: The first is GNU Cobol. It's quite functional for its intended purpose: To port mainframe applications to Linux. However, when writing a new application on Linux you usually want to do things like access arbitrary files (without hardcoding the filename in the source) or make network connections. It does have nice interactive screen support though. The other option is to run MVS 3.8j in Hercules. This is a predecessor to the current z/OS which runs on mainframes today. The problem with this is that it's stuck in the 70's (which is when the last free version of MVS was released). A lot of work has been done by the community to keep it up to date, but the Cobol compiler is the language of 40 years ago, not modern Cobol. None of the above options are really appealing unless you're like me and have a thing for messing around with stuff in their non-native environment. The third option is: http://mtm2019.mybluemix.net/ http://mtm2019.mybluemix.net/ When signing up, it gives you access to a z/OS account where you have a surprising level of access. It's probably running on an emulator (it's quite slow) but it does give you access to modern software, including compilers for Cobol, C, Java etc. It also has DB2 installed. However, the purpose of this option it to learn z/OS, not necessarily learn Cobol. And developing using the ISPF editor isn't particularly nice. They do give you ssh access to the Unix-compatibility environment though so maybe it's possible to edit files using Tramp in Emacs locally. I haven't tried that. In any case, what is needed is a proper Cobol development environment that you can run locally on your workstation. As far as I understand, that's how Cobol developers normally work. IBM would do well by releasing such a product for free. However, I'm not having high hopes given the fact that the mainframe division seem to be actively hostile to any free software (look into the difficulty the community has to get even the smallest community-made improvements accepted by z/OS, or releasing some small tool for the MVS community).

speedgoose 7y ago

Personally I would like to be paid to learn such a technology.

agumonkey 7y ago
There are techs people would accept pay cuts to work with and there's cobol.

kazinator 7y ago

That's a bit like Tom Sawyer offering free fence painting.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jasonkester 7y ago

This isn't the first time the world has needed lots of new COBOL programmers to burst on a single project. I'd suggest the same solution as last time: pay people $500-$1,000 per hour on short term contracts to do so.

dm319 7y ago
As a healthcare worker who also has an interest in programming - why does this comment not surprise me in HN? If a worldwide pandemic doesn't make you reflect on problems in our societal structure - that our key workers are the most poorly paid, but part of a necessary backbone of any country, and that the most over-paid workers are often the least 'key' at times like this - then I guess nothing will. But sure, the solution is just to pay programmers more money, because that is all they care about.
- irrational 7y ago
  How will you get them otherwise? There are way more jobs than qualified developers. Why would anyone want to work on an antiquated technology stack like Cobol? By the time they get up to speed on fixing the Cobol systems, the pandemic will be over. The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    > The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers. Assuming the 're-written' version isn't similarly out of date by that point in time, the real solution is for business/government to finally understand that if your org depends on software then it's infrastructure that requires constant maintenance and scheduled replacement. Getting them to understand that is an exercise for the reader.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
    >> Why would anyone want to work on an antiquated technology stack like Cobol? Because it's actually a hell of a lot of fun. I did a year in a Cobol shop as a graduate developer at a large financial corporation. Working on a mainframe was the most fun I had on that job. And why not? You're logging on to a gigantic computer with millions of users and billions of transactions daily, with a text-based user interface that looks like it was designed by Tarn Adams. And I say that 100% as a compliment. Seen another way, the "antiquated Cobol stack" is like a deep dive into the history of computer science and programming languages. You can see with your own eyes how stuff used to be done 50 years ago. And there is so much to learn. It's not just Cobol: there's a whole bunch of other languages like Rexx for example that is like javascript on a mainframe, or like, well, JCL which is an absolute horror to behold of course. There's a whole new operating system to learn, or three and there's a whole new computer architecture to become familiar with. How is that not absolute programmer heaven? I mean, seriously, when I first got all the permissions and so on that I needed to work on a mainframe, I was giggling to myself like a little girl. "Really? They gave me access to all this?". It was like someone had given me the keys to the playground. The job sure got a bit boring after a while, which is the reason I left, but for a few months it was just sheer tomfoolery, poking at things and finding how things worked. >> The real solution is to think long term and rewrite all of these antiquated systems so that the next time there is an emergency it will be much simpler to find qualified developers. That is not a sustainable solution. Fifty years from now people will be making jokes about "that antiquated Python stack" and state agencies will be ringing alarm bells for the lack of experienced young Python programmers. You can't just keep throwing out all the old code and replacing it with whatever new language is cool right now.

number6 7y ago

I don't want to sound condescending but why can't these systems be rewritten in a modern language? Now is obviously not the right time to do this; I am wondering are there technical limitations to do his?

jimbob45 7y ago
They’d have to be revalidated. Don’t fix it if it’s not broken. Edit: and when do you upgrade? If they upgraded in ‘85, it would be in C++. ‘95, and it would be Java 1.0. ‘05 and it would have been VB6. None of those would have been substantially better save that they would have been easier to hire maintenance programmers for.
- luckylion 7y ago
  And now that they're broken, they can't be fixed. ;) With so many legacy systems that are often in very important places, I wonder whether it wouldn't be smarter to spend money on systems converting a modern language to cobol, e.g. python2cobol. Is that impossible?
  - number6 7y ago
    I guess there are technical reasons. a big bank does risk assessment. I can't imagine a problem like this will go unnoticed for long
- number6 7y ago
  Ok got it. But it seems to be broken somehow if they need programmers now. Maybe write the tests first so it can be validated easier?
- ghayes 7y ago
  C++ or Java seem like great alternatives. And I don't get the reference to VB6-- in 2005, it would still have been Java, and in 2015.
- bluedino 7y ago
  Upgrade? You mean re-write.

safgasCVS 7y ago

What other languages can we expect to see a similar surge in demand? FORTRAN? In the data analysis space my bet is on SAS

exdsq 7y ago
You joke but I still see FORTRAN jobs around where I live than Ruby. I even worked for a consultancy that did a Matlab -> FORTRAN rewrite.
- tossup8536 7y ago
  Fortran is super fast. For math/analytical stuff it's preffered over C. But to avoid relyance on a language with so few devs, these orgs dhould only have code that the the heavy lifting math in fortran. And use expose those as wrspped functions to some other more common and easier to use/mantain/hire
  - Koshkin 7y ago
    Indeed - with its stricter semantics Fortran is much easier for the compiler to generate a highly optimized machine code for.
metreo 7y ago
Fortran (standardized without caps for at least the last couple decades) is current to the 2018 release. I haven't come across anybody who cares or is using it. You do eventually see a lot of older code in it in symbolic and algebraic maths in the deeper code bases still because the algorithms are complex and nobody really wants to touch someone else work if it can still be wrapped in something like R or Python and is nearly as performant as C/++.
- metreo 7y ago
  I guess the thing about Fortran, to circle back to your question, is that it isn't common in critical infrastructure.

watt 7y ago

It's a trap. The problem with those old codebases that governments, hospitals, big businesses are struggling with is not really the language, it's the engineering practices of that time with regards to constraints of old technology. The language is not the problem - lack of comments, bad variable naming, bad structure (little or no procedures or readability), and just sheer volume of it, is. It would be very interesting to see the old systems rewritten in a modern language, with modern engineering practices, but keeping the old UI and UX (which often is incredibly ergonomic) - so as to limit scope and not mess it all up by trying to introduce mouse navigation and windowing mess.

brnt 7y ago
Just finished a contract with a hospital that built a lot of stuff in house in the 80ies based on a C (still pre C89 in many places) and Delphi/Pascal. The problem is indeed volume (over 10MLoC), two or three wizards supporting it all, but firmly coding like it's '83. No training of newcomers whatsoever, and thus really no way to contribute. If you manage to get some support, it will be once a year and in the form of code they wrote for you without much feedback possible. Management prefers not to think about long term, because management obviously does not think long term.
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
  Is it possibly not a management problem at the core? I mean, I know exactly what you mean about suits like to ignore the future, but I've worked with a few 'wizards' who, once they've got the job under their belt, use it to keep other people out. They'll not comment, help, document or whatever, and once they're doing that, they are uncontrollable. They can't be sacked because they're the only ones keeping the system running, and they won't help others train up. That seems a very difficult situation for the suits to deal with, even if they want to.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    well if you have 3 guys that are the wizards that can't be sacked, hire 3 contractors for a year long project to document things sufficiently that these guys become more sackable. Contractors of course have to be highly experienced as well, and well-remunerated, so maybe management doesn't want to go down that expensive avenue, which means it's a management problem. Not to mention the years where they did not comment, help, document or whatever, and became uncontrollable sounds like a management problem over those years.

jonhendry18 7y ago

I'm sure after you finish the training you'll find all the ads looking for people with 5 years experience. Assuming the demand for people still exists by then.

raverbashing 7y ago
No, they need senior programmers so 10+years experience. In the same way they ask for 10+years programming experience in Swift or Rust

metreo 7y ago

Do you really want to end up in a situation where you're in a position of maintaining someone else's ancient codebase? I guarantee you this is not a path to anywhere but misery.

unnouinceput 7y ago
As a freelancer who does this 2 out of 3 jobs, I can tell you is definitely fun if you like challenge as in debug for 3 hours to only realize the old coder in 80's never initialized a structure and a newer tool was used to create the modern platform. And when you come on-board for maintenance/upgrade you are not told this from nobody. So misery or challenge, depends on your point of view, but the other side of the coin is..well, the coin itself, it's huge :). You get paid handsomely.
- metreo 7y ago
  Reportedly, there are definitely more interesting challenges. We are seeing this in academia quite frequently where the older professors have some hard worked program in BASIC from whenever and they try really hard to get someone to maintain it's existence since otherwise their efforts really do disappear. For the person taking this on it's tedious, thankless and of dubious tangible merit to the participant who should be focused on their own contemporary work. Have the reports of high pay been confirmed, AFAIK the push now is for volunteers.
ProZsolt 7y ago
I really like working with ancient codebases. There is no more satisfying thing than deleting 10k+ line of spaghetti code. Yes, you have to spend days or even weeks to figure out how it works. Hunt down edge cases, bugs. If you like playing detective you will like it. I rather work on a huge legacy codebase than rewrite the same CRUD app in the JS flavor of the week.
jpindar 7y ago
I have some experience at porting ancient software to more modern languages, and I found it very satisfying. Maintaining it as it is, without the authority to document and refactor it might not be as much fun though.

altitudinous 7y ago

My first serious computer job (early 1990's) was COBOL. I last used it in 1997, then moved on to Oracle PL/SQL, Java, Oracle's Java software stacks and now iOS ObjC/Swift. Now I'm 52 years old. I have my own apps now on the store, don't need the money but I am looking for a new challenge - something a bit more social than working for myself. I think I'll do this COBOL refresher. Only issue is I'm in Australia but I see there may be some demand here too. Nothing to lose - plenty of time at the moment to do the courses. Good for a laugh anyway.

throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
Serious question, why do you use COBOL and "looking for a new challenge" in the same post? I found it a trivial language with a syntax that goes on for pages. It's entirely uninteresting. The only challenge is understanding any business requirements, and that's not a language thing.
- altitudinous 7y ago
  The language itself is trivial to learn, the environment COBOL is running in is usually the challenge. I really enjoy bug fixing existing software, and I enjoy learning about existing systems. As I said I am done with working for myself, and as for the social aspect, I'd find it interesting to work with peers who may be closer to my age, and not a group who is just starting in the game working on their first big piece of software. I was there 30 years ago, this seems an opportunity to work with more mature and experienced folk. Also back in the day there were far more women working in software than there are now, there may be more gender balance in the older technologies.
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  It's interesting to me that systems could be written that function correctly once they go live and don't have to be taken offline for decades... the architecture, not the language
  - altitudinous 7y ago

JustARandomGuy 7y ago

From the article: * State unemployment agencies are notoriously underfunded* And there’s the problem summarized in less than a single sentence. Yes, they need help, but it’s the same kind of “help” as in “I want a BMW but I only have a dollar, please help” There would be a ton more COBOL coders if companies paid the equivalent of FANG companies - I say this as a former COBOL coder myself

wyclif 7y ago
These New Jersey and elsewhere new COBOL jobs are all volunteer, they are not paid jobs?
- Cyberdog 7y ago
  I am curious about this as well. If we take this "volunteer" word being used in these articles at face value, it means these states are asking for people to work on their systems for free… you've got to be frickin' kidding me. It's such a preposterous idea that I can only believe that it must have been an error or misinterpretation at some level which has entered into and lingered in the news zeitgeist like a fart in the shower and that these states actually do intend to remunerate their contractors at a fair rate. Why else would anyone accept these contracts? Are there really people who are both experienced COBOL devs and such huge fans of the bureaucracy of their states that they'll serve them for free? If there really is any overlap on that Venn diagram, it must be quite small - and shame on every single one of them for devaluing themselves.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    They might mean 'volunteer' like people 'volunteer' for the army in the US. you get paid, and get the tools provided, etc., but you're not going to be forced out of your current life and conscripted in to COBOL work. It's a bad word though, because it creates these confusions. However, they might be at a max of existing COBOL 'full timers'. Who would 'volunteer' to leave their current dev roles to jump in to the NJ COBOL life? Might mean moving to NJ as well...

withdavidli 7y ago

Had to recruit for COBOL engineers 8 years ago. Almost impossible finding someone with less than 10 years of experience. Most were 15-20+ years of experience and about to retire. Many with COBOL experience moved to cloud tech that would never move back to COBOL that would cause them to be outdated. New people in the field seemingly only got trained because they were willing to learn it at a bank. It's a struggle to hire these people cause there are so few people and many companies only want to hire local talent (within 20-50 miles, and don't want to do VISAs). There's money to be made on supporting tech this old, likely more on the consulting side than becoming an internal employee.

Aloha 7y ago

I'll likely run they this course. I've always been interested in this kind of tech, I did mastering the mainframe previously

quickthrower2 7y ago

Next: COBOL 30 day bootcamp with guaranteed job at the end.

Cyberdog 7y ago
I'd say yes to that in a heartbeat. Thirty days is probably not enough to someone new to programming, but to experienced programmers in various other languages it's probably enough to get the basics down and get over the "know just enough to be dangerous" hump. If these orgs desperate for devs want to put their money where their mouth is and start a program like that, hit me up. Sure.
- jpindar 7y ago
  Same here.
- JustARandomGuy 7y ago
  I'd sign up for something like that in a heartbeat. I used to do COBOL, but the problem is that possibilities for advancement are very limited - there's far more jobs available - and promotion pathways - for a Python or Java coder than there is for a COBOL coder. In exchange for a refresher in COBOL and a guaranteed job, yes that is a much better deal.

say_it_as_it_is 7y ago

Unemployment claims processing is something that each State does and yet each has its own unique way of handling it. This approach is followed for every multimillion dollar endeavor, building costly, redundant solutions to the same problem. This has been great for the private sector but costly for the public.

Someone1234 7y ago

The IRS, treasury, and others locally are looking for COBOL programmers. I can explain why they're struggling to find any just by looking at the pay scale: $30,113 - $86,021 (GS-5 through GS-12, and most won't get the top end of the GS-12 scale). The $30K GS-5 starting is almost as low as working for their call center which is farcical. By contrast state, county, and even city government are paying $65K - $85K starting going all the way up to $100K at the top end. And these are jobs where you're doing modern development, not COBOL. People will start learning COBOL as soon as it makes rational sense. As it stands a lot of organizations aren't looking for any COBOL developer, they're looking for CHEAP COBOL developers. It doesn't make sense to learn when you'd lose money for taking those jobs.

beefield 7y ago
> As it stands a lot of organizations aren't looking for any COBOL developer, they're looking for CHEAP COBOL developers. This is one of my pet peeves. I am also thinking that it is outrageous that I am facing such lack of supply of Porsches. What? What do you mean, I should be paying more than a thousand bucks for a brand new Porsche? What sense would that make?
marktangotango 7y ago
This is exactly true. The pay is this low because there is a glut of cheap cobol developers in the US due to decades of off shoring. There have been 2000+ cobol developers laid off here over the past 5 years alone (medium midwest metro).
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  There cannot simultaneously be a surplus of COBOL developers and a shortage of COBOL developers. Well, supposedly there could be one in the Midwest and one in NJ, but theoretically those who do not have a job in the Midwest would be motivated to move, since their only options are: A) Remain jobless in Midwest. B) Switch careers in Midwest. C) Move to NJ for immediately available position. The bigger question is why does a COBOL dev accept work for 60k when they could make 120k in Javascript?

geogra4 7y ago

I looked out of curiosity and there are less than 10 Cobol jobs where I am (4 mln metro area, USA) seems like this is mostly marketing?

erynvorn 7y ago

Young COBOL specialists are being fired here and there. They can't find a job. They can't "volunteer" either they need to get paid at the end of the day. I see Fiserv firing all their 3-6 years COBOL juniors (last in, first out.) They retain only the most expensive 15-25 years pros.

lame88 7y ago

"Why? Because coding a percentage in COBOL would take an estimated five months." Five months to code a percentage, or five months to add the calculation, integrate that data point with other systems (does this need to be shown as its own field on any unemployment forms or reports? etc.), test it to the point where it has been demonstrated stable enough to be included in a critical system, and then deliver this change? I don't know the first thing about COBOL but the fact that government is (for good reasons) slow to move, the stability needed in critical things like unemployment processing, and all the other things that go into "coding a percentage", explain that timeline a hell of a lot more than what language was used.

salamanderman 7y ago

It's very frustrating to me that we're even talking about these COBOL programs today. During Y2K there was suddenly a huge demand for COBOL programmers to come out of retirement and young programmers to frantically learn it. The claim I remember at the time was that those systems should have already been rewritten, but the departments were underfunded, and they were finally doing it since it was an emergency. And yet, all they did was a little hacky patch and 20 years later it's still running. So we're 40-60 years on with these pieces of software. Look for whatever hacks they made for Y2K to be biting people in the butt again in 20-40 years, and programming historians to be pulled out of universities to patch again.

ravenstine 7y ago

Unless they are going to pay me way above my current pay to compensate for dealing with an obsoslete language and the programming practices of its era, no way. This is a great non-monetary example of one of the biggest issues we are seeing in our time. That is, as a civilization, we have become terrible at investing in future contingencies. In the last few months, we have witnessed how our biases prevented most of us(and businesses) from building up a meaningful savings for stormy weather, and the COBOL situation is hardly different. Banks could have invested in gradually switching from older mainframes to modern ones with software built with any modern language, and they were(or should have been) in one of the best positions to do this. Instead, they said "whatever" or simply were complacent in where technology was headed, and did little or nothing. As a society in it's current state, we need to seriously look at ourselves in the mirror.

factchecker01 7y ago

The site is horrendous with ads

vmh1928 7y ago

I'd imagine a lot of the problems are due to the increased volume. So that would show up as abends due to exceeding data set size definitions in JCL, VSAM, IMS or DB2 (or even IDMS and the other database technologies in use 20 - 30 years ago.)If the unemployment system is adding a covid related unemployment code then they would need someone to crawl through the code looking for where the logic needed to change in calculating benefit amount, duration of benefits and such.

tekchip 7y ago

All this, Cobol programmers are in short supply and now let's train new ones, sounds like a sort of technical debt bailout. As some have noted management has failed to look to the future and now their business has a major problem they are struggling to deal with. Same as we debate not bailing out, financially, companies that failed to plan for future disaster or catastrophies I would argue we don't bail out these companies that failed to maintain their own internal technical architectures by planning for upgrades and future maintenance. It's akin to the BS ISPs argue about not being able to afford to maintain it upkeep their infrastructure. It's largely BS. Put less in the upper managements pocket and more in the business and all of a sudden the business works and has resiliency against unexpected events. If you don't think these "vital" banks and hospitals can't afford it then you haven't been paying attention.

strategarius 7y ago

I would not have attended one even if I got paid for it. Why should I flush my career in toilet, sentencing myself to dig into piles of 50 y.o. crappy code. Stop riding dead horse.

arkanciscan 7y ago

Let it die

phendrenad2 7y ago

Okay so I can learn it, but can I run it? Is there a mainframe simulator out there?

bobbydreamer 7y ago

This month I wrote 2 Rexx stored procedures 1. Does a db2 bind 2. Executes any DML, DDL, DCL and selects in Db2 These stored procedures will be triggered by REST APIs & Endevor(version control). What makes me happy is, these will work for another 10+ years without any upgrades or me tinkering the code again for new version. Well if it was any web technology or cloud application, I would be getting a mail from them saying they are going to decommission a version of language so either you need to rebuild your code only to know it fails in new version(every 2 years). Well that doesn't happen in mainframe.

prirun 7y ago

COBOL programs are divided into paragraphs that start with a paragraph name and have a group of statements within the paragraph. A program starts at the first paragraph and continues sequentially through multiple paragraphs until a STOP RUN statement is executed or it executes the last statement in the last paragraph. Easy peasy. Well, not so fast. If you PERFORM a paragraph, then it's like a BASIC GOSUB statement, or "jump and store" in assembly language. Sort of like a function call, but with no local variables. Or you can do PERFORM A THRU B to jump to paragraph A, continuing sequentially until the end of paragraph B. Or you can do PERFORM A THRU B VARYING X FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL C, which is sort of like a for loop. The nasty thing about all this is that looking at a paragraph (block of code), you can't tell shit about how it gets executed. Does it fall through to the next paragraph? You can't tell: that's determined dynamically at runtime. Is it a loop? Can't tell. That's one of the things that makes large COBOL programs really hard to understand. Another fun COBOL statement is ALTER: https://riptutorial.com/cobol/example/19820/a-contrived-example-using-alter https://riptutorial.com/cobol/example/19820/a-contrived-exam... If you think GOTO is bad, it's a walk in the park compared to the lethal combination of ALTER + GOTO. Basically, when you say GO TO A, it can go to some other place based on a previous ALTER statement. Now we're having fun!

ralphc 7y ago

Forget the talk about pay too high, too low. This is a way to help our neighbors who are hurting, a way to help with our skills. A question I'll ask is, someone like me; retired from a long development career, experience in many languages but not COBOL. Could I take this course, or a similar one, and be useful to prop up a rickety code base on a volunteer basis? If yes, are any of these states allowing remote work on it?

ChrisArchitect 7y ago

meanwhile, in the 24th century... https://abstrusegoose.com/323 https://abstrusegoose.com/323 (gonna keep posting this on all the COBOL threads haha)