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Any COBOL programmers out there?

Mia

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Looks as if you are the people needed in various states in the US, to write and fix code ASAP:

Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims:
...you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.


In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy has put out a call for volunteers who know how to code the decades-old computer programming language called COBOL because many of the state's systems still run on older mainframes.
In Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly said the state's Departments of Labor was in the process of modernizing from COBOL but then the virus interfered. "So they're operating on really old stuff," she said.

Connecticut has also admitted that it's struggling to process the large volume of unemployment claims with its "40-year-old system comprised of a COBOL mainframe and four other separate systems." The state is working to develop a new benefits system with Maine, Rhode Island, Mississippi and Oklahoma. But the system won't be finished before next year.

"Literally, we have systems that are 40-plus-years-old," New Jersey Gov. Murphy said over the weekend. "There'll be lots of postmortems and one of them on our list will be how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?"

For instance, with more than 362,000 New Jersey residents filing for unemployment in the past two weeks, the 40-year-old mainframes that process those claims are being overloaded.

The balance of the article here: Wanted: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims - CNN
 
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Even after the whole Y2K debukle 20 years ago. We still haven't learned our lesson.

I don't get it. If COBOL is such an integral part of the business world? Then why is it no longer supported? I mean seriously. FORTRAN, another programming language that came out about the same time as COBOL did, is still being supported to this day and you can still get modern compilers for it. if FORTRAN can still be supported today, then why not COBOL? It seem to me like the computer industry is doing everything it can to kill COBOL for some unknown reason.
 
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Art imitating life: "Space Cowboys".


Technology that outlived its purpose, yet some governments still utilize it until it breaks. :oops: Then again for some, they rationalize "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
 
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I don't get it. If COBOL is such an integral part of the business world? Then why is it no longer supported? I mean seriously. FORTRAN, another programming language that came out about the same time as COBOL did, is still being supported to this day and you can still get modern compilers for it. if FORTRAN can still be supported today, then why not COBOL? It seem to me like the computer industry is doing everything it can to kill COBOL for some unknown reason.
In the 1990s, everyone said Java was the language to have, but I couldn't find any classes in it anywhere. I could have probably learned it on my own, but I would have had no record of such on my résumé.
 
Looks as if you are the people needed in various states in the US, to write and fix code ASAP:

Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims:
...you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.


In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy has put out a call for volunteers who know how to code the decades-old computer programming language called COBOL because many of the state's systems still run on older mainframes.
In Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly said the state's Departments of Labor was in the process of modernizing from COBOL but then the virus interfered. "So they're operating on really old stuff," she said.

Connecticut has also admitted that it's struggling to process the large volume of unemployment claims with its "40-year-old system comprised of a COBOL mainframe and four other separate systems." The state is working to develop a new benefits system with Maine, Rhode Island, Mississippi and Oklahoma. But the system won't be finished before next year.

"Literally, we have systems that are 40-plus-years-old," New Jersey Gov. Murphy said over the weekend. "There'll be lots of postmortems and one of them on our list will be how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?"

For instance, with more than 362,000 New Jersey residents filing for unemployment in the past two weeks, the 40-year-old mainframes that process those claims are being overloaded.

The balance of the article here: Wanted: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims - CNN

I used to program Cobol and Fortran years ago. I am surprised Cobol is still being used after Y2K.
 
I wonder how hard it would be to retrain existing programmers in COBOL. After my first language, the rest have been easy to learn. (I have used ten different languages to date.)

I already have some ideas about how I would approach that problem (if mainframes can talk to other computers).
 
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FORTRAN, another programming language that came out about the same time as COBOL did,
NOw there is a blast from the past - I used Fortran at Uni over 40 years ago. Thanks for the inof that compilers are still available. Any clues as to where - PM me if this is taking the thread off topic
 
In the 1990s, everyone said Java was the language to have, but I couldn't find any classes in it anywhere. I could have probably learned it on my own, but I would have had no record of such on my résumé.

I am learning Java right now for a new project I was assigned to. I've got 10 years experience in C# and it turns out that C# is Microsoft's version of Java, so the learning curve is very easy.

If you know C++, the jump to Java is not that big. If you know C#, it's not a jump - it's more like falling backward.
 
Even after the whole Y2K debukle 20 years ago. We still haven't learned our lesson.

I don't get it. If COBOL is such an integral part of the business world? Then why is it no longer supported? I mean seriously. FORTRAN, another programming language that came out about the same time as COBOL did, is still being supported to this day and you can still get modern compilers for it. if FORTRAN can still be supported today, then why not COBOL? It seem to me like the computer industry is doing everything it can to kill COBOL for some unknown reason.

If I'm not mistaken, banking mainframes use COBOL. It would cost them too much to migrate data centres and their data. It's quite archaic. It's much like finding a piece of mystery food on a plate in the back of your fridge...you don't know what it is, but you still want to play with it.
 
I am learning Java right now for a new project I was assigned to. I've got 10 years experience in C# and it turns out that C# is Microsoft's version of Java, so the learning curve is very easy.

If you know C++, the jump to Java is not that big. If you know C#, it's not a jump - it's more like falling backward.

How do you like OOP? I hate it. It seems so redundant. constructors, getters, setters, instantiating objects, releasing objects...it all drives me batty. Am I wrong on this? Or am I not getting the concepts well enough? Wouldn't structs suffice for 'object' creation?
 
How do you like OOP? I hate it. It seems so redundant. constructors, getters, setters, instantiating objects, releasing objects...it all drives me batty. Am I wrong on this? Or am I not getting the concepts well enough? Wouldn't structs suffice for 'object' creation?

I've been using OOP for 25 years. It's hard for me not to think in terms of OOP.

For small projects, it's okay for one person to know everything about all the code, and for one person to have access to all the structures.

I've worked on projects with dozens of programmers and millions of lines of code. When you get to that scale, one person can't know how everything works. So you wrap your complicated code in an object and give it an interface. Now, all anyone else needs to know is the interface. It's like hiding the engine from the driver and just giving them a gas pedal and a brake. They don't need to know all the specs on the engine. All they need to know is how to make it go and how to make it stop.

Then, you decide that you don't want the other programmers crashing your code, so you uses getters and setters to limit what they can see and prevent them from setting invalid values. Like preventing the driver from redlining the engine by driving it too hard.

I haven't touched on maintainability, re-usability, and other aspects, but I'm sure there are tons of blogs and websites with better pitches for OOP.
 
I've been using OOP for 25 years. It's hard for me not to think in terms of OOP.

For small projects, it's okay for one person to know everything about all the code, and for one person to have access to all the structures.

I've worked on projects with dozens of programmers and millions of lines of code. When you get to that scale, one person can't know how everything works. So you wrap your complicated code in an object and give it an interface. Now, all anyone else needs to know is the interface. It's like hiding the engine from the driver and just giving them a gas pedal and a brake. They don't need to know all the specs on the engine. All they need to know is how to make it go and how to make it stop.

Then, you decide that you don't want the other programmers crashing your code, so you uses getters and setters to limit what they can see and prevent them from setting invalid values. Like preventing the driver from redlining the engine by driving it too hard.

I haven't touched on maintainability, re-usability, and other aspects, but I'm sure there are tons of blogs and websites with better pitches for OOP.

WOW! Thanks for that! Now that is an explanation that I can understand!
 

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