Comments

Dixon Couloir said: You are lamenting something that just wouldnt be efficient in the big picture Thanks for succinctly encapsulating the failure of capitalism into one sentence

john doe said: People have been saying that for a long time about many other languages and yet they are still here In the computing area predictions and opinions worth nothing

Furlow said: Actually I correct myself I dont actually mean ASCII art but EBCDIC art in this context eh

Furlow said: Seriously companies should hold workshops in schools that show zOS running on the Hercules zArchitecture Emulator which runs on all the major platforms Windows Linux Mac OS X etc They should show neat things that can be done with it along with come cool multicolored ASCII art and donate some operating system licenses to the schools so that they can be experimented withIt is also in this way as well that interested individuals like me could network with the right people who are interested in hiring for this sort of thingIf I were to show a unique but simple COBOL application I had written to one of these people would I be consideredAnd perhaps this shouldnt be limited to the academic environment Hold meetings and demonstrations in major and non-major metropolitan areasGeneration-Y hadnt grown up with text-based inferfaces and are at an inherent loss when it comes to working within text-based environments I however am in my 30s and had grown up with BBSes and have technolust for the command line I also hold a degree in Computer Science I wouldnt necessarily mind making a career change to work with these systems if it were more feasibleI live near a major city However the closest academic program for mainframes seems to be at a University four hours away along the seaboard Id say there isnt enough public relations going onThese companies should be targeting middle-aged folk like me But why havent they targeted people like me There is a research amp development snafu somewhere

richardjking2000 said: Pfft like business wants to Pay for trainingBusiness doesnt pay for training because a lot of the training already exists in the form of trade schools and collegesuniversities Economies are like ecosystems the most efficient providers end up winning You are lamenting something that just wouldnt be efficient in the big pictureSmall companies typical have very narrow needs and no resources Larger companies have slightly less but still narrow needs and the resources to train So do you let companies do all the training and have programmers infinitely silod into a narrow area Or do you let schools try to provide more breadth and given everyone the ability to be successful with that broader skillset I KNOW WHICH ONE ILL CHOOSE EVERY TIMEI for one am tired of folks bagging on business without any thought beyond stage 1 thinking There are economic realities at work that made things the way they are

richardjking2000 said: Indeed surprising how many folks dont see that

richardjking2000 said: I completely disagree If schools can provide active skills to help their students immediately after graduation THEY SHOULD it does two things 1 guarantees the school has more applicants 2 gives the students a better chance of a job and future success Schools that dont pay attention to details like that end up with shrinking student populationsIm not saying COBOL should be a requirement because from what I can tell COBOL is truly dying cant remember when I saw a job listing on the internet for COBOL But the schools business problem is about helping their students to future success not bowing to some ivory tower idea of shouldshouldnt We live in a real world not a theoretical one There IS core curriculum that is important but day to day skills learned in college bring a lot of value to a new job applicant quickly Schools ignore that at their peril

richardjking2000 said: Hmmm where to start1 some comments suggest that business doesnt understand it priorities and just let the technicians do what they want Hint that is one of the primary disconnects that ends up de-valuing IT in any business Businesses only have so much money to invest in infrastructure which means that frequently you are caught deciding between some computing upgrade with a tenous relationship with your bottom line or something you know is going to impact your ability to succeed THAT is why Cobol and other older languages persist Businesses are making real everyday decisions about how to spend their money and STAY in business2 Im AM willing to believe there is a call for COBOL Ive talked to folks still using Unisys mainframes so that legacy exists but for the life of me Ive not seen an opportunity in my geographical area that asks for COBOL in a long time Whenever I look its always Java C C as the major demands Im sure if I looked hard enough Id find COBOL but the demand from my perspective is off-the-scale low3 For those claiming that universities should only offer newer languages my answer is Let the market decide If demand for a language exists then the schools can decide to offer it Teenagers are awful at making forward looking decisions about how to be trained for their careers If the adults with experience see the demand in the marketplace for specific skillsets they are only enhancing their graduates chances of success by offering training in those skillsets WHATEVER THEY AREWhat is cool or uncool in IT does not pay the bills Providing value to a business is what pays the bills Every year I look at what businesses are demanding via job boards and make sure I stay trained in that If all of a sudden COBOL became a huge thing you can bet Id be training up in it I value my salary over fashion every day of the week

Furlow said: The truth is simple There exist no technical schools in the United States to teach technical skills like this that also carry the clout respect and versatility of curriculum that academic universities have for their intended demographic UATedu is the only somewhat notable exceptionThis even confuses employers who want employees who rest on academic laurels but have the insight of a dyed-in-the-wool engineerAll of the technical-based universities like DeVry UAT and whatever have you unfortunately tend to emanate something of a queer not as in homosexual and ersatz vibeMathematics was traditionally seen as a blue-collar vocation by society ie working with ones hands However IT hasnt gained any notoriety like mathematics has in the academic environmentSchools in India seems to recognize this dichotomy and have addressed it accordingly unlike schools in America

Lawrence Knowlton said: Colleges and universities need academic computing focus but also need to keep an eye on how will their students succeed outside of their walls

MythicalMe said: I should think that businesses would have converted all their legacy code shortly after 2000 I guess that fixing Y2K problems was less expensiveCOBOL always struck me as a weird language but I learned it as part of my curriculum I dont expect that Ill ever need the skills again

Pete Dashwood said: JCL is Job Control Language Its kind of like Scripting but for IBM mainframes COBOL in that environment Uses JCL to connect to its data resource and to get programs scheduled for execution

Pete Dashwood said: I cant believe Kevin Brearleys comments here showcase Cobol as a relevant in-demand business skill with a promising future What planet is this true on While Micro Focus have a vested interest in talking up COBOL making patently untrue statements like that supported by the old Gartner chestnut statistics about billions of lines of COBOL running the planet even Gartner have since distanced themselves from these statistics that were produced over a decade ago and are impossible to verify in any meaningful way simply destroys any credibility that the actual survey MAY have had IF COBOL has a promising future where are the jobs Mainframes will be and are being replaced by powerful networks which need objects and layers COBOL is not good at that and even OO COBOL is a verbose afterthought added in to the language and not picked up by the user community When they DO pick it up they realise that OO languages like Java C et al are quicker and cheaper to write and maintain Why would you pay thousands for a COBOL compiler to write OO COBOL when Java and C are free Its the language behind 65 percent of all active code and 85 percent of all daily business transactionsYeah right and 85 of all uncited statistics are made up on the spur of the moment Maybe in 1989 this might have been trueUniversity of Limerick has been a COBOL stronghold for decades There is no evidence that their graduates are more highly thought of than grads from other schools although there is no harm in learning COBOL You can go to University and learn Latin Sanskrit and Ancient Greek it does no harm but jobs that require it are thin on the groundYou would be just as unwise to stake your future on COBOL as you would be to stake it on the languages mentionedI started writing COBOL in 1967 And I DO know that CICS and JCL are NOT programming languages but leave that aside for now Right through to the mid 1980s it was quite reasonable and safe to advise young people to make a career in COBOL programming But that hasnt been so for 25 years now The world has embraced the Network and the Object paradigm THATs where the future isHere are some more thoughts on it which you may find amusingSorry looks like links cant be posted try a search on Cretaceous COBOL spawns Jurassic Java

Pete Dashwood said: I cant believe Kevin Brearleys comments here showcase Cobol as a relevant in-demand business skill with a promising future What planet is this true on While Micro Focus have a vested interest in talking up COBOL making patently untrue statements like that supported by the old Gartner chestnut statistics about billions of lines of COBOL running the planet even Gartner have since distanced themselves from these statistics that were produced over a decade ago and are impossible to verify in any meaningful way simply destroys any credibility that the actual survey MAY have had IF COBOL has a promising future where are the jobs Mainframes will be and are being replaced by powerful networks which need objects and layers COBOL is not good at that and even OO COBOL is a verbose afterthought added in to the language and not picked up by the user community When they DO pick it up they realise that OO languages like Java C et al are quicker and cheaper to write and maintain Why would you pay thousands for a COBOL compiler to write OO COBOL when Java and C are free Its the language behind 65 percent of all active code and 85 percent of all daily business transactionsYeah right and 85 of all uncited statistics are made up on the spur of the moment Maybe in 1989 this might have been trueUniversity of Limerick has been a COBOL stronghold for decades There is no evidence that their graduates are more highly thought of than grads from other schools although there is no harm in learning COBOL You can go to University and learn Latin Sanskrit and Ancient Greek it does no harm but jobs that require it are thin on the groundYou would be just as unwise to stake your future on COBOL as you would be to stake it on the languages mentionedI started writing COBOL in 1967 And I DO know that CICS and JCL are NOT programming languages but leave that aside for now Right through to the mid 1980s it was quite reasonable and safe to advise young people to make a career in COBOL programming But that hasnt been so for 25 years now The world has embraced the Network and the Object paradigm THATs where the future isHere are some more thoughts on it which you may find amusingSorry looks like links cant be posted do a search on Cretaceous COBOL spawns Jurassic Java

Pete Dashwood said: It wont be And not because there is anything actually wrong with COBOL As you point out it is a good language and it has served us well But modern business and modern technology needs networks and networks need objects and layers The days when you could let a centralized single processor do everything really ended as soon as on-line real time access was required and interrupts had to be serviced immediately Commerce in the 1960s was a far cry from commerce today It isnt being replaced because there is something newer it is being replaced because there are better ways to meet todays requirements

Pete Dashwood said: You can be forgiven for thinking so -

Pete Dashwood said: It is already on a life support machine The new paradigm is simply cheaper faster and better The world has voted with its feet The Network rules all hail the Network

Pete Dashwood said: Not my paycheck I would agree there are many corporations particularly in the USA still running Big Iron and COBOL But eventually the Balance Sheet is what rules and I am seeing Banks and Insurance companies replacing their centralized mainframes outside of the US

Pete Dashwood said: Amen Although many of them are getting the message Modernizing legacy does NOT just mean re-compiling to OO COBOL

Pete Dashwood said: I agree with you but writing COBOL is actually fun I did it daily for around 25 years and I still do a bit occasionally when Im bringing legacy into the 21st century -