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The language is fine: It's the ecosystem that's not. Nobody in the top 50 CS programs worldwide teaches COBOL. Most of the COBOL programs run on mainframe wher
by 908B64B197 6y ago
The language is fine: It's the ecosystem that's not.
Nobody in the top 50 CS programs worldwide teaches COBOL. Most of the COBOL programs run on mainframe where it's at least a few k$ to even get a look at the documentation or hardware. So nobody bothers with it.
And most (older) programs don't folow modern conventions either. Custom application specific databases? Check. Lost source code/incomplete? Check. No version control? Check.
And most folks running these programs are in orgs that are chronically underfunded anyways.
- tyingq 6y agoWell, and the COBOL is also likely running in an ecosystem with similar skill shortages. AS/400, or z/OS, MPE, etc. Things like file transfer, message queues, backups, batch jobs, os specific file formats,and so on won't be in COBOL. They will be in various different proprietary setups.
- monkeycantype 6y agoI'm really curious how the hiring for jobs on legacy mainframes works. My Dad was the consultant IBM hired to fix issues in system/32/34/36 and AS\400 software for customers in Australia. He had a title related to RPG, but I don't know what it was. Growing up we had a (functioning) system/36 and later an AS\400 in the shed. He's never stopped developing, still works as a .Net developer, but hasn't been able to get through the recruiter filter for RPG and cobol jobs, possibly because he hasn't worked with recent generations of these tools, even as he is getting hired for .Net jobs on major systems.
- tyingq 6y ago"He had a title related to RPG, but I don't know what it was." That's pretty neat. RPG is apparently the default high level language used on IBM midrange systems (AS/400). I looked at a beginners tutorial here: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/coding-rpg-iv-beginners-tutorial https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/coding-rpg-iv-beginners-tu... It seems very similar to other procedural languages, and one of the examples shows a very easy FFI interface to call out to C. They make a wrapper for printf.
- LegitShady 6y ago>Custom application specific databases Not doing COBOL but am working with an ancient application supporting business operations and this is my hell. Also, the databases are likely ancient, outdated, and poorly documented (at least according to my PTSD). "Oh it uses an oracle db? What version? 10? FML - you know that versioncan legally drink in Canada, and the EOL for that product is going to have a bar mitzvah in a couple years, right?"
- p_l 6y agoAt least with IBM the documentation is freely available, but you're pretty SOL if you encounter non-IBM platform. Some have docs, some don't, but finding IBM is at least reasonably easy.
- 908B64B197 6y agoDoesn't matter: the industry has moved-on. They had to make it open decades ago. Now it's too late.
- gnu8 6y agoI don't think that is really accurate; nothing processes transactions like an IBM mainframe. To draw a crude automotive analogy, no matter how much you soup up a truck, it is never going to be a locomotive. It is simply a different scale of machine.
- astrange 6y agoAre there actual objective benchmarks for things like this? Everything you actually see out of IBM is so bad (blockchain 5G AI cloud nonsense) and Moore's law exists, so it's hard to believe this stuff is that good as opposed to just having a really good moat. I am surprised how many government/bank systems run on 50s-70s code; it makes you wonder if we kept in practice writing those kinds of things since then.
- bawolff 6y agoIBM is a shell of what it used to be. I don't know if what the grandparent is saying is true, honestly i highly doubt it, but its unfair to compare old ibm with its current incantation of marketing fluff and bad high priced consultants.
- rbanffy 6y ago> Are there actual objective benchmarks for things like this? Probably not, but they are machines designed for throughput, with a multitude of intelligent peripherals that pipe data in and out of the CPU, which will be running at close to 100% speed all the time. The CPUs themselves are quite impressive (they present at Hot Chips regularly) and each cluster of 4 sockets share almost a gigabyte of L4 cache. Everything is also constantly checked, audited, logged for security and reliability. I wouldn’t be surprised if these machines thoroughly smoked a rack of souped up x86s at a similar budget in transaction processing applications.
- pjmorris 6y agoSounds like a pretty solid moat around the business model.
- throwawayboise 6y agoTop CS programs are not about learning any specific language.
- 908B64B197 6y agoCorrect, but they'll have students coding in a real environment as a side effect of submitting assignments. And nobody does that on mainframes or using COBOL.
- throwawayboise 6y agoDatabase will be DB2, VSAM, or ISAM files. At worst, this is no worse than the seat-of-the-pants noSQL, YAML garbage that underlies many "modern" apps.
- sien 6y agoOr IMS - a pre SQL database. Or Object Star. Or M204. These can be done better than a seat of the pants noSQL database, but sometimes people also got creative in the past too. I've seen all of those databases being used in legacy government departments.
- el-salvador 6y agoA few years ago my country's and other Latin American import and export system still partially run using an MS Dos app. I wouldn't be surprised if they would still be using it now.
- 908B64B197 6y agoAt least MS-DOS is pretty well documented.
- hatmatrix 6y agoMaybe COBOL needs a Racket-type implementation that can be hacked upon to make it cool again.