4 ms·
> Everyone with unmaintainable COBOL has long since migrated to really bad Java code instead. Sadly this is entirely untrue. What's happening in practice is th
by busterarm 6y ago
> Everyone with unmaintainable COBOL has long since migrated to really bad Java code instead.
Sadly this is entirely untrue.
What's happening in practice is they're still running COBOL and they're paying some woefully underpaid and underappreciated developers to write PHP ("Zend Core") for System-i.
This allows companies to run web applications on these aging systems.
- thequux 6y agoI know that Mono for i, at least, is the result of an IRC bet between a couple of hobbyists about whether it was technically possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the PHP port was similar
- spijdar 6y agoMono's port was done on their own initiative. Zend Server is, however, an IBM supported product. The same goes for e.g. node.js where IBM ported all of V8 to ppc64. (There is a community version of PHP released in 2019, but the commercial version precedes this) This same work has proved useful in running chromium on ppc64le/Linux, even if I think running node.js on IBM i sounds ridiculous ;)
- aksss 6y agoPlenty of jobs for remote COBOL devs in the 120-160k range, still. I wouldn’t call “live-where-you-want” at 150k/year woefully underpaid. That affords a great living in a lot of America. ‘Specially if you take two.
- busterarm 6y agoI wasn't talking about remote COBOL devs. Pay for PHP devs, even on these systems is generally lower and a lot of the work is in Europe where developer pay is half.