Re: COBOL?
By: unixl0rd to All on Tue May 02 2023 07:09 pm

Asking whether a given niche language is a good one to learn for job purposes is rough.

I follow a gent on Twitter who is one of the more well known experts on IBM mainframes and Cobol and the like, as well as integrating them with modern systems.

He recently lost his job with IBM, and was casting around looking for new employment, and it was rough.

Does that mean you shouldn't learn COBOL or IBM mainframe technology? Not at all! It could be an interesting experience and improve the depth and breadth of your understanding of technology as a whole.

But are your chances good for being able to walk into a COBOL job because you tool this course? Maybe, but I certainly wouldn't bet the farm on it :)

To my mind, contributing to open source and building a resume of code people can review and appreciate matters a lot more, as well as job experience.

The thing employers want to know is: Can you do what they need?

Good luck, have fun, and keep learning no matter what you do!

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Feoh wrote to unixl0rd <=-

He recently lost his job with IBM, and was casting around looking for
new employment, and it was rough.

Does that mean you shouldn't learn COBOL or IBM mainframe technology?
Not at all! It could be an interesting experience and improve the depth and breadth of your understanding of technology as a whole.

I was thinking of people learning the basics of COBOL or RPG as an
additional skill. I thought that might come in handy, and for the jobs
looking for those skills, finding someone not near retirement age might
set you apart from any competition for the role.

(As I look at my own career, and realize I'm one of those guys nearing retirement age... except with no mainframe experience.)

To my mind, contributing to open source and building a resume of code people can review and appreciate matters a lot more, as well as job experience.

Modern languages are a little more conducive to home projects, in my
opinion. A Github page with utilities written in BASH, a Python script,
or PHP that you use personally seems likely.

A COBOL program that collates inventory orders and updates onhand
quantities? Not something you'd code in your spare time (or at home!)




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Re: COBOL?
By: unixl0rd to All on Tue May 02 2023 07:09 pm

I just found out that IBM offers a free introductory COBOL course:

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol rogramming-with-vscode/

Is there actual demand for new COBOL developers? I thought companies were on

Thoughts?

... It is always darkest just before you turn on the lights.

If COBOL is something you're interested in it's definitely still worth having it on your resume. I probably wouldn't put it at the TOP of the resume (depending on the job your applying for), but there is still some good demand for COBOL programmers out there.
Speaking from experience, where I work (as is the case everywhere) the cobol programmers are aging out and retiring. The new ones we hire are still in the same general age range and I'm sure they are demanding a lot of money since the pool is getting smaller and the codebase is still significant.

It's proven to be a very resilient language despite it's faults, and more reliable than many of the newer ones to come along over the last 20+ years (IMO).
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Speaking from experience, where I work (as is the case everywhere) the cobol programmers are aging out and retiring. The new ones we hire are still in the same general age range and I'm sure they are demanding a
lot of money since the pool is getting smaller and the codebase is still significant.

I've got about fifteen years of experience as a web developer and to be honest I am kinda bored. Learning COBOL might give me the stimulation I need right now even if it doesn't land me a job.

... I BM. You BM. We all BM for IBM!

Re: Re: COBOL?
By: unixl0rd to CDP on Thu Jun 01 2023 07:45 pm

Speaking from experience, where I work (as is the case everywhere) the cobol programmers are aging out and retiring. The new ones we hire are still in the same general age range and I'm sure they are demanding a lot of money since the pool is getting smaller and the codebase is still significant.

I've got about fifteen years of experience as a web developer and to be honest I am kinda bored. Learning COBOL might give me the stimulation I need right now even if it doesn't land me a job.

must be nice to have the time to do that.
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unixl0rd wrote to CDP <=-

I've got about fifteen years of experience as a web developer and to be honest I am kinda bored. Learning COBOL might give me the stimulation I need right now even if it doesn't land me a job.

In general, learning other languages, especially on different platforms, teaches you a great deal and make you think a little differently in the programming languages that you use.

Back when I was in college, they taught Pascal as the starting language. Not because it was a great language that you would use in the Real World, but because you would often take the ideas that you learned in Pascal and apply them to other languages like FORTRAN or COBOL (ex: minimize GOTO statements).

For me, learning about Python's async code helped me a great deal in understanding the same ideas in C# that I use for work.

It also helps to get a difference perspective from other systems with other constraints. At work, we had a problem where a newby programmer basically sent 16GB through a system that assumed that data would be 16MB and basically gummed everything up. The root problem was that this newby programmer had never encountered a system that didn't have more than enough resources to do whatever he want. For those of us who grew up with computers with 16K, we always think about asking if we have enough resources.


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Re: Re: COBOL?
By: unixl0rd to CDP on Thu Jun 01 2023 07:45 pm

I've got about fifteen years of experience as a web developer and to be honest I am kinda bored. Learning COBOL might give me the stimulation I need right now even if it doesn't land me a job.

There's a lot of demand for other programming languages too. Lately, several of the projects I've worked on have used C# (Windows desktop software), and there's a lot of demand for mobile development too (Kotlin or Java on Android, and Swift or Objective-C on iOS). C++ and C are used for some projects, and so on.. Depends on what you'd be working on.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: COBOL?
By: unixl0rd to CDP on Thu Jun 01 2023 07:45 pm

I've got about fifteen years of experience as a web developer and to be hone

... I BM. You BM. We all BM for IBM!

Coincidentally I have a book sitting on my desk in front of me that I had tucked away for years and never used. Sams Teach Yourself Cobol in 21 Days. I've actually been going through that in my spare time just to do something with the book before I pass it on. I work mostly as an admin in infrastructure so the bulk of my 'coding' is really scripting and ansible playbooks.

We have young developers who might be able to use it though. It's fun watching Java devs wrapping their heads around Cobol, but they seem to do ok. It's unique compared to some of todays languages but not terrible to learn at all. -----------------------
CDP
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Re: Re: COBOL?
By: CDP to unixl0rd on Fri Jun 02 2023 07:29 pm

Re: Re: COBOL?
By: unixl0rd to CDP on Thu Jun 01 2023 07:45 pm

I've got about fifteen years of experience as a web developer and to be hone

... I BM. You BM. We all BM for IBM!

Coincidentally I have a book sitting on my desk in front of me that I had tucked away for years and never used. Sams Teach Yourself Cobol in 21 Days. I've actually been going through that in my spare time just to do something with the book before I pass it on. I work mostly as an admin in

get back to us in 21 days.
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